Brain Freeze
by sincerelymendacious
Summary: A small town in West Virginia is having some difficulties with a certain subset of its population that only two elite psychic agents can help with. That is, if their car doesn't completely break down before they even get there.
1. Chapter 1

It had started to rain again.

Truman swore softly to himself, telekinetically tugging the hood of his rain jacket over his head and angling his face away from the open window as best as he could while still keeping his eyes on the road. They'd stopped at a Burger King about an hour back for breakfast, and the window had simply given up after rolling up about halfway. Truman really should've expected it- the white 1993 Buick that the agency had lent them was only five years old, but had been involved in multiple minor collisions during its short existence, and as a result wasn't in the best of shape. But despite being dented and evidently lacking a functioning power window system, the car ran fine, and its shabbiness could almost be considered a small benefit, as nobody would assume that the two men in the vehicle were actually psychic government agents.

At this moment, Truman did not feel like a highly-trained agent, or even a competent adult for that matter. Droplets of cold rain hit the left side of his body and seat, which was irritating, but thankfully at this time it was merely drizzling and didn't seem likely to get any worse than that. _Wonder how much time it would take to get this fixed,_ he thought idly, keeping an eye out for their upcoming exit.

 _Mentalis would eviscerate you if you took the car to a shop._ The sudden voice in his head gave him a start. _You know he doesn't like civilians touching agency property._ His partner turned away from the window, the corner of his mouth turned upward in a wry smile. "Sorry," he said flippantly. "I know I shouldn't do that." He gestured vaguely at his bruised cheek. "Force of habit."

"Don't worry about it," Truman replied absently, his attention on the right windshield wiper. Was it not moving across the windshield all the way? He could've sworn it was stopping about an inch above where it was supposed to…

"Want me to drive?"

"Nah." The exit for Sutton had just become visible. "We're almost there."

* * *

His partner had come out of nowhere.

Last year Ford Crueller had gone to an international conference on weapons smuggling in New York City and had returned to headquarters with a skinny German telepath who had trouble minding his own business. He claimed that his name was Sasha Nein- a name so obviously fake that one had to believe that he was using it ironically. Within hours of his arrival, rumors about the origin of the strange new recruit arose. He was a former weapons trafficker who had snitched on his comrades in exchange for protection and immunity, some said. He was a convict who was being given a chance for a reduced sentence, said others. He was a parasite from Europa who had taken over the original Sasha's brain and was spying humanity on behalf of a race of super- intelligent cephalopods (this rumor was rumored to have been started by Sasha himself).

Sasha Nein never confirmed or denied any of these rumors and absolutely refused to speak of his origins. He was more interested in other people. More specifically, in other people's thoughts. Even more specifically, in reading the thoughts of other people without their permission, something that was widely considered to be a great way to get one's ass kicked around headquarters.

At first, it was assumed that it was being done accidentally. Then, when it became clear that he was doing it on purpose, it was explained to him that what he was doing was considered rude, and that some of his more sensitive peers wouldn't appreciate him reading their private thoughts. He had nodded his understanding of the explanation and continued to do what he was doing. The head instructor had thrown her hands up at that point, and told him not to come crying to her if he got his shit kicked in as a result of his behavior. Sasha had nodded and told her not to worry about him and then proceeded to get into a fight with another psy-cadet not ten minutes later.

Something about Sasha must've been really special, because in spite of his bad manners he managed to complete his training within a year. Truman didn't yet know what that special thing could be as their partnership had only begun a week ago and he actually hadn't interacted with the man before that.

Truman had been running late the day he and Sasha had been formally introduced, which wasn't unusual because Truman had never been on time for anything in his life. Cruller had waved away Truman's apologies and told him that he was finally being assigned a partner. Truman had sat down across from the Grand Head and glanced at the chair next to him. It was empty. Cruller smiled patiently and held up a finger. A minute passed and then the door opened and in came Agent Nein, clad in a stylish green jacket and dark glasses, and the left side of his face swelling and reddened.

Sasha Nein did not apologize for his tardiness. He didn't offer any excuses or explanations. He sat down in the chair next to Truman, turned toward him and bluntly stated "You're Truman Zanotto. I've heard of you."

"I've heard of you too, Agent Nein," Truman had replied, inexplicably feeling as though this moment would be one in which years into future he would look back on and think _that's where this whole thing started._

He had wondered if Sasha had felt the same, as the corner of his mouth had risen briefly in a sort of half-smile before quickly turning into a wince.

* * *

The first order of business was figuring out what to do about the Buick's broken window.

They couldn't just leave it parked out in front of the Sheriff's office with the window half-open. But they couldn't get it repaired either, partially because that would take time that they didn't have, but mostly because the Chief Information Officer would blow a gasket if the car was touched by someone that was not affiliated with the Psychonauts. Sasha had been the one to come up with the brilliant solution of just taping it up. They stopped at a gas station a mile outside Sutton, bought some tape, and got to work setting the window right while an old man with scraggly facial hair eyed them suspiciously.

"What's that guy's problem?" Truman asked as Sasha carefully tugged the window back up with telekinesis.

Sasha looked back through the passenger window at the glaring stranger. "He's jealous of your beard," he said as the window closed completely.

"Oh." Truman wasn't sure if Sasha was being serious or not, but he taped up the window as quickly as he could in case the old man felt the need to start a fight over it.

They pulled into the parking lot of the Sheriff's office about twenty minutes later. Truman was disappointed, but not surprised to see that they had arrived ten minutes late for their meeting with the Sheriff. As they exited the vehicle, an officer approached, a deputy judging from the badge.

The three stared at one another for a moment, the deputy's wary gaze sliding from Truman to Sasha and then back to Truman before he spoke. "Can I help you gentlemen?"

"We're here to speak with Sheriff Walls," Truman replied, almost sounding professional. He reached for the badge in his pocket. "We're with the…" He had reached into the wrong pocket, fuck. "Uh, we're with the Psychonauts."The deputy examined the badge, not looking particularly enlightened. "I'm Agent Zanotto and…" Should he introduce Sasha? Or would he prefer to introduce himself? He hadn't said anything yet, but maybe it wasn't Truman's place to speak for him…

An awkward silence stretched as Truman thought too hard about something that didn't really matter all that much. Agent Nein stood stoically, giving no indication that he had any intention of speaking anytime soon. "This is my partner, Agent Nein," Truman finished weakly, well-aware of how much of a goddamn fool he must look like.

Thankfully, it seemed that the despite the odd introduction, the deputy was willing to go along with it. "You guys here 'bout those kids that ain't acting right?" He gestured at the entrance to the office with his thumb. "Sheriff's waitin' for you."

The deputy led them as far as the door before leaning back against the wall he'd been standing at before Truman and Sasha had arrived. They stopped, waiting for him to continue into the building, but he waved them away with a "go on now,' something that struck Sasha as funny enough for him to have to stifle a laugh.

The mission was off to a great start.

* * *

Truman could've sworn he'd seen Sheriff Walls before.

That place was probably on TV, because the Sheriff both looked and sounded like a character straight out of one of those old-time TV shows. Middle aged? Check. Folksy Accent? Check. Gruff, no-nonsense attitude? Check. Innate distrust of strange psychics coming to meddle in local affairs? Triple Check.

The Sheriff would tolerate no hocus pocus, no abracadabra, nor any other unnatural tomfoolery in his town. "Now, I'm willing to do what needs to be done to straighten these kids out," he explained, hands clasped on his desk. "But these are God-fearing people." He leveled a steady gaze right at Truman. "They're not going to appreciate no high-cotton government agents going around reading minds and blowing things up. Is that clear, gentleman?"

He seemed to be addressing Truman specifically for some reason. "With all due respect, Sheriff," he began, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, unsure if the Sheriff was going to like what he had to say. "My partner and I are highly trained psychic agents who specialize in paranormal activity. If we're here, it means that our abilities are necessary in order to solve this case." He paused, giving the Sheriff a moment to consider his words.

Walls nodded grimly. "I understand that sir, but folks 'round here are already on edge." He sighed, running his hand through his thinning grey hair. "Just try not to be obvious about it, okay? For your own safety." He glanced over at the buck's head mounted on the wall.

Truman followed his gaze. The buck's head was massive, the antlers poking into the ceiling. "You think there might be trouble?"

"I'm just saying that there's a lot of hunter's 'round these parts, if you catch my meaning."

"We'll keep that in mind."

"Hmm." Walls opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out a stack of files. "I assume you've been briefed on our situation…"

* * *

The situation was that twenty-seven teenagers living in Braxton County were behaving strangely and nobody could figure out why. Medical doctors could find no phsychical symptoms, psychiatrists had no luck analyzing the kids, and the EPA ruled out any environmental anomalies within the county that could've caused the issue.

The strange behavior began about two months ago in mid August, shortly before the start of the school year. Bradley Vipperman, a junior at Braxton County High School, had driven off in his 1995 Ford pick-up truck and had come home a day later, sans truck and shuffling along the streets of Sutton in a fugue state. His mother, thinking that Bradley had melted his brain with drugs somehow, had immediately taken him to a hospital, but tests revealed nothing more than traces of alcohol in his system. Bradley's odd, zombie-like state persisted for weeks, but nobody other than his mother and doctor thought much of it. Bradley was what one would call a 'troubled youth,'- getting into fights, skipping school, staying out late partying- and most of the town reckoned that he'd gotten into a bad batch of meth that night and that was all there was to it.

Until the school year began and Cheyanne Walker, a straight A student and captain of the girl's volleyball team, found herself in a similar state.

The circumstances behind her affliction were nearly identical to that of Bradley's. She'd gone over to a friend's house after school and hadn't returned home that night. Her parents hadn't been worried at first- they figured that she'd stayed over at her friend's house and simply forgot to call them. She turned up the next morning not speaking and somewhat glassy-eyed. Her father had thought that perhaps she'd had a fight or something with her friend and was too upset to talk. He and her mother, both professors at a technical college in a nearby city, had left a little later, trusting their daughter to get herself ready for school like she always did.

When they arrived home that evening, they'd found their daughter seated placidly on the couch in the living room, staring off into space. About twelve empty Otterpop wrappers lay scattered on the floor.

Over the next few weeks, twenty-five more students in the class of 2000 would share Bradley and Cheyenne's fate. They weren't in comas, or catatonic, as they still had basic living skills, and maintained a basic schedules of school-home, and those that had jobs managed to make it to work on time. But that was it- they functioned, but they showed no emotion, couldn't complete any activity that required real thought, and would not speak a single word.

Perhaps strangest of all was the fact every single afflicted teen suddenly had a bizarre craving for Otterpops. They typically wouldn't bother with the frozen ones, preferring to drink the warm, sweet liquid right out of the plastic tube. At first authorities had believed that the popsicles were tainted, but no other town was reporting anything like this and tests revealed nothing out of the ordinary about the popsicles themselves. Still, the Sheriff temporarily banned all local stores from selling the pops, just to be on the safe side. The teens, once deprived of the only thing that seemed to matter to them, exhibited no anger or distress. They merely sat, vacantly staring off into space.

The Sheriff, having exhausted all other avenues of investigation, and under increasing pressure from terrified parents and concerned citizens, had placed a call to the F.B.I., who told him to call the C.D.C. Since they had already investigated, he was his wit's end…until two days ago when he received a call from a man claiming to represent the Psychonauts.

* * *

Two days later and he was sitting across the two agents that they had promised would investigate the phenomena to the best of their abilities.

 _He's skeptical of us,_ thought Sasha.

 _You mean he's skeptical of me,_ Truman replied.

 _Well, yes, that is what I meant. He thinks you're a rookie and I'm training you. Kind of ironic._

Ironic? Yes. Surprising? No. If there was a template for government agents, Agent Nein fit it perfectly. Sleek, dark clothes, black glasses, and an unwaveringly stern expression that made him look much older than he actually was; Sasha Nein could easily be mistaken for a veteran agent rather than a rookie on his first mission. Even the fading bruise on his face could reasonably be explained away as an injury received in the field, rather than in a fight with a fellow cadet.

Meanwhile, Truman Zanotto was chubby, awkward, had a beard down to his chest and possessed a baby-face that likely did not inspire a whole lot of confidence.

Sheriff Walls certainly appeared to be holding all of that against him. "So- Sir, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Go for it." Truman already knew exactly what he was going to be asked.

"Just how old are you?"

"Nineteen," he answered.

The Sheriff furrowed his brows. "That seems awfully young. Is this your first assignment?"

It was Truman's first assignment with a partner, yes, but his fourth one overall. He'd had this exact conversation on each of his previous missions, and was semi-prepared to explain himself once again. Before he could open his mouth, however, Sasha cut in, speaking out loud for the first time since he had arrived at the office.

"The Psychonauts are not like the C.I.A or F.B.I. Our cadets begin training at very young ages, most starting in their early teens. Agent Zanotto may be young, but he's already worked on a few high profile cases." Sasha leaned forward towards the Sheriff. "Do you remember that serial killer in England who was liquefying people's brains?"

"The Mad Melter of Manchester?" The Sheriff's eyes widened in astonishment.

 _Uh, Sasha?_ Truman thought, glancing anxiously at the German. _I wasn't on that case…_

"Agent Zanotto was the one who located the killer's hideout," Sasha said, as though he had not heard Truman. "Without him, the Melter surely would have continued his spree, perhaps even making it to the States."

The lie was uttered so effortlessly that Truman almost believed that Sasha really thought he'd been involved with that case. The Sheriff certainly bought it. "Well, I'll be," he said, looking at Truman with a new found respect. "I've got to admit, when you two first walked in, I wasn't so sure…" He trailed off, a huge weight lifting off of his shoulders. "Well, I sure am glad that the Psychonauts were serious about sending their best."

Truman smiled weakly, the very picture of confidence. "Er, yeah…"


	2. Chapter 2

"You do know that I wasn't on that case, right?" Truman asked as he drove down Sutton Ln. "Agent Seo was the one who found the hideout."

"I was only trying to boost the Sheriff's confidence," Sasha replied, staring out at the passing town. Blocky, brick buildings lined the street, most of them old but in good repair. "It's not as though he'll find out the truth."

Truman was not worried about the Sheriff finding out about Sasha's lie. "Anna really wouldn't like it if she found out someone else was taking credit for her work."

"She won't find out, then." Sasha turned away from the window to face him as Truman stopped at an intersection. "You think the Sheriff actually shot that deer?"

"What? Uh, probably."

"I find it quite strange that he put a dead animal in his office."

A loud banging on the window caught both of them off guard. Truman turned to see a middle-aged man in a Steelers cap standing outside the car, knocking on the window. "Hey!" he yelled, voice muffled by the glass barrier between them. "I wanna talk to you guys! Roll the window down!"

"We can't!" Truman shouted back. "The window's broke!"

"Does he expect us to talk to him in the middle of traffic? That's absurd." Sasha said dismissively. "The light's green. Just go."

The man must've seen that too, or he had ears like a bat, because he moved in front of the car before Truman could drive away. "C'mon guys! I've got important information! About the case!"

The man did not look like he was going to be moved anytime soon, at least not until he got what he wanted. Truman and Sasha had two options: they could shove him out of the way with telekinesis or they could stop and hear him out. Truman glanced around the streets, noticing a small amount of people stopping to stare at the spectacle. If he or Sasha pushed him out of the way it could frighten the spectators. And since this was a small town, word would naturally spread, perhaps to someone who might see that particular action as a threat to the town's safety. On the other hand, it wasn't like they had a whole lot of time to waste on someone's crackpot theory. _But what if he does have important information? He might be acting like a crazy person because he knows something or has seen something…Or he could legitimately be a crazy person…_

The car behind them honked, and Truman decided that at the very least they should get this man safely off the road. "Tell him we'll talk if he gets out of the way."

Sasha nodded, rolling down his window and relaying the message. The man grinned and gave them a double thumbs up as he walked back onto the sidewalk.

It seemed that Sasha had been under the impression that Truman had been planning on speeding off once the obstacle had been removed. "You really think that this guy knows something relevant?" he asked as Truman parallel parked in front of a small general store.

"You never know," Truman said as he maneuvered the Buick into a tight parking space. He hated parallel parking. "Besides, don't you think we should find out how he knew we were working on the case?"

"Hmm. Good point," Sasha conceded as he pressed the button for the power windows. When nothing happened, he did it again, pressing down harder the second time. "Uh, Truman…"

A drop of water hit the windshield, then another. Truman sighed in resignation as Sasha opened the glove compartment and handed him the tape.

The man in the Steeler's cap caught up to them just as Truman was getting out of the car. He held out his hand, still grinning widely. "Sure do appreciate you fellas stopping to talk!" he said loudly, as though there was still a window between them. "I know you must be mighty busy, but I got information that'll blow your case wide open!" His handshake was strong and enthusiastic, which indicated that he genuinely believed that he had something useful to tell them. "Name's Randy Ratowski!"

"I'm Agent Zanotto. And this-"

"Looks like the rain's picking up!" Randy interrupted, pointing to the building they were standing in front of. "This here's my store. We can talk inside."

"Yeah, in a minute. We gotta fix our other window." Truman felt his face heat up, embarrassed by their predicament. Did F.B.I agents have to put up with shitty cars? Or was it just something the Psychonauts had the pleasure of dealing with? "We'll meet you in there."

"You mind if I watch?"

"Watch what?"

"You fix the window. I wanna see how you guys do it."

Very confused, Truman shrugged and walked over to the passenger side, Randy Ratowski following close behind. By the time he was finished, Randy was thoroughly disappointed. "I was expecting something a little more exciting to be honest."

"Like what, exactly?"

 _He thought we were going to weld the window shut with pyrokinesis,_ Sasha thought, irritated, as he exited the Buick. He was frowning at Randy, who seemed to realize that he had put his foot in his mouth and was babbling some inane answer.

 _Why'd he think that?_ Truman wondered. _He must've seen that our other window was taped up too._

 _Because he's an idiot that doesn't know shit._ Out loud, Sasha asked "How did you know that we were with the Psychonauts?"

"My buddy's a deputy up at the Sheriff's office," Randy clarified as they made their way over to the store. "He called me and said that there was a skinny guy with glasses and a big guy with one hell of a beard driving around in a white Buick Century." He held the door open for them. "Didn't say anything about your accent, though. You German?"

"No," Sasha said sharply as he pushed past Randy and stalked into the store.

"Geez, sorry," Randy muttered, nudging Truman as walked past. "What's his deal, huh?"

"He's just…uh, you know how Europeans are."

"Ah, gotcha." Randy gave Truman a conspiratorial wink as he closed the door.

The store, plainly called 'Sutton Dry Goods', was typical of most Mom & Pop stores scattered throughout the American Midwest. The shelves in the front were stocked with food items like bread and potato chips. The back was lined with freezers containing milk, frozen meals, and one completely devoted to pepperoni rolls. Steelers memorabilia decorated the walls and counter. All and all, the store was nothing special, except for the barest traces of leftover psychic energy. It wasn't much- almost unnoticeable, the hint of a hint, but it was evidence enough that a psychic had been here recently.

 _You feel that?_ Truman asked.

 _Hmm…Someone-or something- was definitely here, but it's too faint to get a good read on it._ Sasha scanned the store, looking for where the energy was most concentrated. _You talk to him and I'll try to pinpoint the source._

Randy had gone behind the counter and was rifling through one of the drawers. "Mr. Ratowski, have you noticed anything strange going on around here?"

It was the stupidest question that Truman could've opened with, and all three men in the store knew it. "I- mean, uh," Truman stammered, feeling an embarrassed heat creep up the back of his neck. "Aside from…you know…"

"Did you happen to sell otter pops at any point in the last two months?" Sasha cut in, thankfully giving Truman some time to think of a question that wasn't completely idiotic.

Randy put two plastic baggies on the counter. "I stopped selling those weeks ago, when this whole mess started getting out of hand and the Sheriff asked me to pull them."

"But you did sell them."

"Yeah. Them loopy kids used to come in and buy 'em." He shuddered. "Eugh. They looked like a bunch of zombies, all shufflin' around and drooling…'cept they was covered in popsicle syrup instead of blood and guts."

Truman and Sasha looked back at the freezers. The energy could, possibly, have been coming off the teens when they had come in to buy the otter pops. _Most of what little energy there is appears to be concentrated at the counter and in the candy aisle._ Sasha thought.

 _And those teens likely haven't been in here since he stopped selling those popsicles anyway._ Truman figured he'd better ask Randy about it anyway, just to have it on record. "Mr. Ratowski-"

"Listen, I didn't make a dang show of myself out in the street to tell you fellows a bunch of stuff you already know." He pointed at the baggies on the counter. "This ain't about the kids…well, it is but…look, what I got is information on a suspect. Look at these bags."

Truman and Sasha glanced at each other instead of the bags. "Mr. Ratowski, when we spoke to the Sheriff, he didn't mention anything about any suspects. In fact, he didn't believe that there was a human origin to any of this."

"That's because the Sheriff don't know about Eddie Bodkin!"

The name was unfamiliar. "Who is that, exactly?"

"He's a psychic!" Randy declared loudly.

"We weren't aware that there were any psychics living in this area," Truman said, beginning to feel uneasy.

"That's because nobody knows about it but me! And maybe the boy's parents." He paused, thinking for a moment before speaking again. "I don't actually think he's been psychic for very long, to be honest."

"Mr. Ratowski…" Truman glanced back at Sasha, who was still investigating the candy aisle. Sasha stared back at him, face unreadable. "What-"

"Y'all feel it, don't you?" Randy interrupted. "All that psychic energy, over in the candy aisle." He picked up one of the baggies, thrusting it towards Truman. It was full of change, and the coins within it jangled loudly as Randy shook the bag. "He was in here last week!"

"And?" Sasha said, coming forward to the register. His voice was restrained, and his face was its usually stoic mask, but Truman could feel the waves of agitation coming off of his partner. And though he wasn't psychic, Randy seemed to sense it too, as he shrank back a little at Sasha's approach.

"Er…he was in here and he…" Randy swallowed, withering under Agent Nein's scrutiny. He set the baggie full of coins back on the counter before he could drop it out of nervousness.

"He bought two packages of Reese's Peanut Butter cups, each costing seventy-five cents, on Wednesday of last week." He telekinetically lifted the bag Randy had been holding off the table, effortlessly bringing it to his own hand. "The week before," he continued, lifting up the second bag in the same way he had done the first. "You found one dollar and fifty cents worth of change on the counter when you came in to open the store. But you don't know exactly what was bought." The bag slid through the air, this time to Truman. He took it, uncertain of what exactly Sasha wanted him to do. Were they playing good-cop-bad-cop? Was he the good cop? But Randy wasn't a suspect, so what was the point of all this? _Sasha, what are you trying to do here?_ he thought, stuffing the bag into his jacket pocket. _This isn't how we usually interview witnesses._

Sasha ignored Truman's questions, choosing to instead freak out the now stunned and silent Randy even more. "The last time you saw Eddie Bodkin was during his shift on July 14th, during which you saw him disappear for three seconds before re-appearing in the exact same spot. The next day you received a call from his father informing you that Eddie would be in South Carolina for the rest of the summer due to a family emergency. But you suspect that Eddie never actually left Sutton, and that his parents had been trying to keep his psychic abilities a secret, and that's he's the one who has been in your store buying candy after closing. Am I correct?"

Randy nodded slowly, his mouth dropping open in awe.

"There are traces of psychic energy in this store, I will admit that. However, we do not know if it's from this Eddie, and even if it is, that doesn't mean that he has anything to do with this town's current predicament." Sasha took a single forward toward the counter, that single step emphasizing the seriousness of what he was about to say next. "This is all the information you have. It is a potential lead at best. You have not cracked this case for us. Do not, under any circumstances, go bragging about your involvement to any of your friends at the bar. And if you choose to disregard this order and put the Bodkins in danger, my partner and I will personally make sure that you deeply regret it. Is that clear?"

"Yeah. Crystal," Randy responded, his voice soft with astonishment. He stood stock still, staring at Sasha, his pale, blue eyes wide. "Holy…Holy crap!" he exclaimed, enthusiasm and amazement bringing him quickly out of his shock. "You just read my got-dang mind! And I didn't even feel a thing!" He grinned widely. "How'd you do that?"

The reaction was clearly not one that Sasha had been expecting. "Why would you feel anything?" he grumbled, a bit taken aback.

"And that stuff with the floating bags! That's crazy!" Randy was practically radiating excitement at this point, his eyes bouncing from Truman to Sasha. "Can you do that too?" he asked, the question directed at Truman. "Or are you like, super strong or something? Man, they should make a movie about you guys!"

Though his eyes were hidden by his glasses, Truman had the feeling that Sasha was rolling them pretty hard. "I'll let you take it from here," Sasha said to Truman, his voice stiff with anger. He walked off, stopping only to take the car keys from Truman before exiting the store.

Randy watched him go, his excitement dampened by Sasha's abrupt exit. He turned to Truman, scratching his chin. "He didn't like me much, did he?" he concluded. "Was it something I said?"

If Truman had to guess, Sasha's dislike of Randy probably began seconds after they had met, when he asked to watch them tape up that stupid window because he thought it would be an interesting show. Truman did not know what sort of life Sasha had led before joining the Psychonauts, but it was clear that he did not appreciate being treated like some sort of performing animal. And it wasn't like Truman- or any other psychic for that matter- could blame him. The freak-show style fascination some people had with psychics was twice as annoying than any other reaction a non-psychic might have upon discovering a psychic in their midst. If somebody is hurling slurs and threats at you, than it is considered completely fine to tell that person to fuck off in the eyes of society, but say the same thing to someone who's trying to get you to use your powers for parlor tricks because they're 'curious' and suddenly you're being rude and are the reason why everybody hates your kind. There were certainly worse people out there than Randy Ratowski- Truman knew that from personal experience- but that didn't make his ignorance any less grating.

Still, Truman wasn't going to bother explaining any of this to Randy. He needed to stay focused on the case, and having that particular discussion right now wasn't going to aid in solving the mystery. Not to mention the fact that he was already behind schedule, and couldn't afford to eat up more time on this detour than he already had. Moving on was the best course of action. "Agent Nein just doesn't want to waste time. There's a lot of ground that we need to cover and-"

"His name is Agent Nein?" Randy blurted out, interrupting Truman yet again. "Like seriously, that's his name?"

Truman sighed. "Yes, that's what we call him."

"Is it spelled like the number? Or is it N-E-I-N?"

"Mr. Ratowski-"

"'Cuz if it's spelled that way, don't that mean his name is 'Sasha No' in his home country? That's weird, man. Unless it's like a code name? You guys do that sort of thing? But your name doesn't seem fake…"

Oh boy. This stop was beginning to look more pointless the more Randy rambled on with this nonsense. He really should walk out of here right now…but there was still Eddie Bodkin to deal with. If there was a young, scared psychic hiding out somewhere in town, it would be worth it to find him, even if it turned out that he had nothing to do with the town's zombified teens. There weren't many resources for young psychics in a place like West Virginia, and there was probably nobody in this town that Eddie could turn to for help. Truman had been lucky enough to live his entire life surrounded by psychics, but he'd heard some pretty awful stories from other agents that hadn't shared that privilege. Being a lone psychic out on the streets was rough, and for all he knew, Eddie could be in danger at this very second. Or, maybe he actually was the mastermind behind these bizarre attacks. There was also the chance Randy was mistaken, and that Eddie actually was in South Carolina as his parents had claimed, and the psychic energy was coming from something else.

There was only one way to find out. "Tell me about Eddie Bodkin," Truman said, cutting off Randy's inane musings on the usefulness of code names. "You said he was one of your employees?"

"Technically Agent Nein said that."

Truman took a deep breath, doing his best to keep his frustration at bay. "Mr. Ratowski," he said, using every last bit of his patience to keep his voice stern and steady. "This is a serious matter we're discussing here. Twenty-seven lives are at stake, and that number could go up at any minute. So please, when I ask you a question, I need you to just answer it to the best of your ability, because this information could be what helps us solve this. Do you understand?"

Randy nodded, appearing to be properly chastised. "Right, I get that sir, yeah. It's just that nothin' like this has ever happened before. This town's usually real quiet…"he trailed off, and swallowed, realizing that he was rambling again. "Yes, Eddie worked here during the summer. Mostly he'd just stock the shelves and clean up the place."

"How well did he get along with his peers?" Sutton Dry Goods was one of the few places within easy traveling distance for most of the teens in this town, so Randy would probably have some insight into this.

"I reckon he got on alright with them," Randy responded. "I mean, he's always been the kind of fellow what keeps to himself, but most of the kids would say hi to him if they saw him."

"Eddie was a loner?"

"Uh…I dunno if I would call him a loner." Randy slid his fingers under his cap to scratch his head. "He was kinda quiet. Didn't speak unless spoken to. But he didn't have trouble talking to people. And he wasn't shy. Does that make sense?"

Truman understood what Randy was getting at, but all of this information made it less likely that Eddie had anything to do with this case. If Eddie got along well with the other teens, why would he try to hurt them? There had to be something more to this. "Eddie goes to Braxton County High like the victims, right? Is he a junior?"

"Nope. Sophomore this year."

That ruled him out as a potential victim, unless whoever or whatever was doing this decided to deviate from their current pattern. "Did he ever mention to you about having problems at home? Or at school?"

"No, I actually think he got along great with his family. His pa's a plumber who works up the street, and they usually walked home together," Randy recalled. He looked out the storefront windows, as though he thought the two of them might walk by. "As for school, well, the only thing that comes to mind is this one time he complained about getting detention once for not having a hall pass." Randy chuckled. "He called the guy that gave it to him 'Dickhead-Donkus'".

So no trouble with peers, no trouble at home, and no trouble at school, aside from one asshole teacher. Eddie Bodkin seemed like an ordinary teenager, and Truman was certain that he would not be having this conversation if it weren't for the boy's alleged psychic abilities. Truman decided that he would ask one more question, and then he would thank Randy politely and hope that he and Sasha would be able to make-up for any lost time. "Can you think of any reason that Eddie would want to hurt any of the victims? Because from what I'm hearing, it doesn't seem like Eddie would have any reason to be involved in this."

"Oh, Eddie's not the suspect."

What.

Truman stared at Randy in disbelief, now at the absolute limit of his patience. If Eddie wasn't the suspect, than why were they here? Why did Randy risk getting run over just to tell them a lot of bullshit about some kid who can maybe turn invisible? "Now, hang on, don't look at me like that!" Randy said defensively, putting his hands up. "He's involved yes, but I don't think it's his fault! The suspect I have information on is forcing Eddie to work for him." Randy opened another drawer and pulled out a slim binder.

Truman looked down at the black three-ring binder, not exactly eager to find out what gibberish was contained within. _Easy now,_ he thought to himself. _Ford always says that you gotta look under every single stone in a situation like this._ One had to wonder how many stones that sounded as nutty as Randy Ratowski Ford had had to deal with during his long career. "Okay," Truman said calmly, taking the binder and tucking it under his arm. "Who is the suspect, and what does Eddie Bodkin have to do with any of it?"

Randy grinned, as though he'd been anticipating this very question from the beginning. "We got us a legend round these parts. You ever heard of the Flatwoods Monster?"

* * *

"I fucked that up, didn't I?" Sasha said immediately upon Truman's return to the car.

"What?" Truman replied absently as he handed the binder to Sasha and buckled his seatbelt. The binder, full of information on the Flatwoods Monster that Randy had printed off the internet, was tossed onto the back seat a mere second after it touched Sasha's hands. At this moment, Truman was more concerned with getting out of this parking space without colliding into any of the cars that surrounded them. "Who the hell invented parallel parking? Why'd they have so much hate in their heart?" he muttered as he turned the keys in the ignition.

The German wasn't looking at him, instead facing the window, though it was unlikely that he was admiring the scenery outside. His cheek was resting on his hand. "Please just answer the question," he said, a tiny hint of anxiety in his voice.

"Um." Truman put the car in reverse, praying to Jesus that he'd be able to get out of this tight parking space. "What did you ask?"

Sasha's head snapped to face him, his mouth a tight, grim line. "H-hang on a sec," Truman stammered as the car inched backward. "Don't glare at me right now. This is, uh, a delicate process." Sasha did not stop glaring, but Truman somehow managed to get the Buick onto to Sutton Ln safely. "Yes!" he exclaimed, glad to finally have a victory of sorts in a day so far comprised of mechanical failures and embarrassing conversations.

"Truman!"

"What?"

"Did I fuck up back there?" He sounded pretty upset. Why?

"Yeah, kinda," Truman said honestly. Sasha Nein did not seem like the sort of person who would appreciate any sugar-coating of his errors. "I mean, using telepathy is fine but…you shouldn't let them know you're doing it. That really freaks the non-psychics out, and they usually stop co-operating right then and there." Truman stopped at a red light, keeping an eye out for Braxton County High School, their original destination before Randy had distracted them. "Although I don't think it really hurt that much in the end."

Sasha muttered something that was probably a curse word in German, running a hand through his short dark hair. His jaw was clenched. "Everyone makes mistakes, man," Truman reassured. The light turned green so he moved forward. "God knows you're gonna see me making a lot of them." He may have just made one right now. Was he supposed to make a left at that light?

"It's the next left. No light, just a stop sign," Sasha said, replying to a question Truman hadn't verbally asked. "What I did back there is basically what they tell you not to do when interrogating a witness."

Truman couldn't remember ever hearing that during his training. "They say that in telepathy class?"

"Yes. It is literally one of the first things."

Truman wouldn't know. The Zanottos were notoriously bad at any sort of mind-reading, their main skill set being more physical abilities like marksmanship and telekinesis. Dr. Boole had once joked that it was because they were too full of themselves to care about what other people thought about anything. Truman's father had not found the remark funny and had almost challenged the doctor to a duel over it.

"I was angry at the way that man gawked at us. He thought we were going to do tricks for him like a couple of circus performers." His tone was bitter- this was clearly a sore subject for him. "That is not an excuse. I apologize. It will not happen again."

Truman turned the left blinker on and slowed down to a stop. Sasha had sounded so serious- had it really been bothering him that much? "I believe you, man," he said, turning to smile at his partner. "You don't seem like the type to make a mistake twice."

Though he didn't smile back, Truman could sense the relief coming off of him. He couldn't have possibly thought that Truman would really care that much about this, could he? Perhaps he had just needed to vent his frustration at himself. "Regardless," he said, his voice back to its usual emotionless tone. "I think you should do the talking from now on. You're good at it."

Truman laughed. "You're joking, right? I'm a mess."

"When you think too hard, perhaps. But I was listening in on your conversation with Randy after I left," Sasha said as they made the left onto Jerry Burton Drive. "You have more patience than most. I cannot think of anyone else at the agency who would've tolerated that man for as long as you did."

The school was right up ahead, a tall, three-story brick building. The recent rain had turned the bricks a dark, rusty red. Truman scratched his beard, reflecting on Sasha's words. He was generally a laid-back person, and was slow to really get angry at anyone. But he didn't think that one trait made up for all of his other social and professional faults. "It's nice of you to say that. Thanks."

"You don't believe me," Sasha stated bluntly as they pulled into the school's parking lot.

"My-the high-ups always say that I'm weak and inefficient." _Too slow, too soft. That mother of yours coddled you too much._

"They're wrong and I'm right. I've only known you for a week and I can tell that you're someone people easily trust."

Wow. Sasha really thought that about him? He certainly sounded sincere but… "I wish I had your confidence."

"Than be confident," Sasha said simply. As though it were that easy.

Maybe it was for him. He was so sure and direct about everything he said and did. Even when he made a mistake he just acknowledged it and moved on instead of worrying about whether he'd make it again. It was a quality that Truman both envied and found incredibly attractive in a person.

Wait.

Oh God.

Truman slammed the brakes, the jarring stop thrusting him and Sasha forward roughly. Why the hell had he thought that? Had Sasha heard? He glanced at Sasha, his beet red face thankfully obscured by his beard. Sasha merely looked annoyed by the sudden stop, which was good, because if he had heard what Truman had just thought, he definitely would be reacting with something more akin to horror and embarrassment. "Is there something wrong with the brakes now?" he asked, oblivious to Truman's mental gaffe.

"I sure hope not!" Truman said quickly. He peeked out the window and, realizing that he was taking up two parking spaces, moved up a bit. "So…" he began, hoping to change the subject before he had another stupid thought that the telepath might overhear. "What did you think about Randy's theory?"

"His theory about how Eddie Bodkin is being forced to aid the Flatwoods Monster in its quest to zombify the class of 2000 for some unknown purpose?" Sasha shook his head. "It's garbage."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that."

"The Flatwoods Monster is a myth. Our planet has not yet made meaningful contact with extraterrestrial life."

"You don't believe in aliens?"

"Oh, there's definitely life out there," Sasha stated firmly as he unbuckled his seatbelt. "I've seen it for myself."

Truman's eyes widened. "You…you mean, like, psychically?" He knew that Sasha was a skilled telepath, but this…"You contacted an alien? On another planet?"

"To say I contacted them would be stretching it. I merely saw one."

"That's…wow. That's amazing. How did you manage that?"

"I…hmm," Sasha muttered, his hand on the door handle. "You believe me? It doesn't seem insane to you?"

"I can talk to plants, dude. I don't think that you seeing an alien in a vision is that much weirder."

Sasha looked at him for a long second before reaching out psychically and entering Truman's mind. Truman allowed it, wanting Sasha to see that his interest was legitimate. He withdrew after a few moments of scanning and said "We should probably get going."

"Oh." Truman shook off his disappointment and exited the vehicle alongside Sasha. His partner was right. They needed to stay focused on the mission. But God knew that he was more curious than ever about Sasha Nein.

They were halfway across the parking lot when he felt Sasha's hand on his shoulder. "I'll tell you about it after the mission, alright?" he said, before withdrawing his hand and moving on ahead at quick pace. Truman followed close behind, feeling as though he just passed a test he hadn't known he'd been taking.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a vile taste in his mouth.

Psychic energy was typically felt by a sixth sense located within the pineal gland. Eddie Bodkin's alleged energy had felt like a very faint touch in the center of his brain, the feeling similar to that of a fly crawling up an arm. On rare occasions, the energy could have a synesthetic effect, in which the energy was felt through one of the other five senses.

Truman swallowed, the action not diminishing the foul, sickly-sweet taste at all. It was like someone had forced a cup of sap down his throat, sap that had been mixed liberally with toxic sludge, with a light hint of something vaguely fruity laced throughout the concoction. The taste had come upon him at the front stairs leading to the school's main entrance and had only gotten worse after they had entered the building.

Sasha was feeling too, if the grimace was any indication. _It's like I drank a syrup and gasoline cocktail and vomited it up,_ Sasha thought, his hand covering his mouth.

 _Same here._ Truman searched the school's lobby for a water fountain. It was across from the main office, next to a clear case full of trophy's and photos of the school's alumni. He strode over to it, his loafers making an annoying squeaking noise on the white tile floor. The water, though lukewarm, was refreshing, and it did abate the nasty taste a little bit. He took several gulps of water before turning back to Sasha. "You want in on this?" he asked, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Sasha considered the fountain for a moment before declining. "Germs," he explained.

"Suit yourself." He took one last drink, knowing that the relief was probably only temporary. "Maybe they have a vending machine around here somewhere." Sasha shrugged as they walked over to the main office.

A pretty lady with blond, styled hair was sitting at the front desk, typing away at a blocky computer. She looked up as they entered, smiling politely. Her smile did not reach her eyes. "Are you gentlemen the uh…agents? That Sheriff Walls said were coming?" She sat up, her posture stiff.

"That's us." Truman smiled, doing his best to appear non-threatening. He couldn't tell if the secretary's apprehension was due to them specifically or if was just because the recent events had rattled her.

 _Her son is a junior, though not one of the victims,_ clarified Sasha.

She must be scared out of her wits. "Sorry we're late," he said apologetically. "We got uh, sidetracked."

Her face brightened. "Did you find a lead?" she asked, hopeful.

"I, uh, can't really discuss that," he replied, looking down at the nameplate on her desk, "Mrs. Anderson."

"I understand." She got up from her seat, eyes downcast. "I'll go tell the principal that you're here."

"Thank you. Um, actually…" Truman smiled sheepishly. "Do you have any water? Hate to bother you, but…"

"Oh! Of course!" She hurried over to the mini-fridge set in the corner of the room and grabbed two bottle **s**. "Here you are," she said as she handed them over.

"Thank you so much." Truman took them gratefully and tossed one to Sasha. Sasha twisted the cap off immediately and downed nearly half the contents in one gulp.

Mrs. Anderson came back quickly. "Principal Stokes is waiting for you. Go right on in."

Principal Stokes looked so much like an older version of her secretary that Truman had to wonder if they were mother and daughter. _No relation,_ Sasha thought as they greeted the principal.

 _Are you always gonna answer every question that pops into my head like that?_

 _Do you want me to stop?_

 _No, it's…uh, I'm just sorry they're all so dumb._

"Welcome to Braxton County High, gentlemen," Principal Stokes said, cutting their mental conversation short. "I only wish it was under better circumstances." She settled back down into her chair after shaking both of their hands. "My goodness, you fellows don't look much older than the students here."

"We're actually in our mid-thirties," Sasha replied, the lie sliding effortlessly out of his mouth. "Psychics age slower than the general population due to the strain that our abilities put on our system."

"Pardon my French, but that's a load of crap," Principal Stokes countered just as effortlessly. "And I wasn't calling your credentials into question with that remark. I actually think that your youth is a plus. The students here might trust you more than they did the police or C.D.C."

"Do you think your students might be hiding something?"Truman asked.

"I honestly don't know what to think," Stokes took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Maybe it's a new S.T.D. Maybe they've all been sniffing glue. Right now all of our students are on edge, especially the juniors." She put her glasses back on and glanced up at the wall clock above the doorway. It read 10:25. "Classes change in twelve minutes. You ought to watch these kids out in the hallway. It's not just the afflicted ones who are affected by this."

Truman mulled the principal's words over. There was definitely something supernatural at play here- the nasty taste that he and Sasha were experiencing was proof enough of that- so this wasn't being caused by any ordinary street drug or disease outbreak. However, certain psychedelics, particularly those cut with naturally occurring psychoactive ingredients such as psitanium might be potent enough to destroy a normal person's brain if ingested irresponsibly. Though that wouldn't explain the strange, foul-tasting energy…

 _Psychedelics do not cause this sort of effect, and certainly not for such an extended period of time,_ Sasha informed him. _Besides, it is unlikely that anybody in this town would have access to the materials necessary to create such a drug._

There went that theory. "Aside from all of them being in the same grade, is there anything else that these students have in common?"

"That's the only thing that I can think of that's tying all of this together," Principal Stokes said as she bent over and picked a file box up from off the floor. She placed it on her desk. These are the permanent records of all of the victims." Each file was clearly labeled and arranged in alphabetical order, starting with Bartlet, G.

It was going to take a while to go through all of this by hand. "Do you know, off the top of your head," Truman said, hoping that he and Sasha might have a shortcut, "if any of these students are over eighteen?"

Principal Stokes raised an eyebrow, unsure of why she was being asked this question. "No, the oldest one is that Vipperman boy. He's seventeen."

Damn. The Young Minds Protection Act made it impossible for Psycho-Portals to be used on anybody under the age of eighteen. No way for them to gather clues directly from the minds of any of the victims.

 _Is there no way to bypass that at all?_ Sasha inquired.

 _No, none that I know of._ That was probably a good thing, even if it was inconveniencing them at this time.

Sasha apparently did not agree. _I do not understand your nation's obsession with the age eighteen. A sixteen-year old's brain is not that different developmentally from an eighteen year old's brain._

Truman wasn't sure how true that statement was, but it was a moot point either way. They were not going to be exploring any of these student's brains in the near future. So what angle could they look into? The only connection these students had to each other was that they attended Braxton County High and were all juniors. Juniors that likely had a specific set of courses taught by a specific set of teachers. The sheriff had interviewed all of the teachers employed at the school, but all of them claimed that they hadn't seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. Of course, if one of them was involved with this somehow, than it wouldn't have been too difficult to lie, given the sheer outlandishness of the situation. "How many teachers are employed here?" he asked.

"Forty, I'd say." She tilted her head, mentally counting. "And I'd guess that there are about thirty more people on the staff that aren't teachers, if that matters."

At least seventy people worked at this school. And there were, at last count, five-hundred students, with about a fifth of those students being juniors. The school was the most probable source of whatever strangeness was going on here, but Truman hoped that he and Sasha would not have to look into six-hundred people before finding a person of interest. "Out of those forty, how many of those teach junior-level courses?"

"That's difficult to say," Stokes answered. "We do have teachers that teach junior-level courses and only junior courses."

"But not all of these students are on the same level academically, are they?" Sasha added. He was leafing through the files telekinetically, giving each one a brief look.

Stokes stared at him, a bit taken aback by the blatant display of psychic ability happening right in front her. She shook it off quickly and nodded in response to Sasha's observation. "We've got students like Vipperman, Green, and Jones, who are all in various remedial classes. Cheyanne Walker and Christopher Sealoft were both on the honor roll and taking senior-level calculus. Most of the others fall somewhere between." She rubbed her temples. "That's not counting all the electives."

Jesus. Truman had never considered just how spread out these students were academically. He hadn't attended public school- it had been private school for him until age thirteen, and then the agency had taken over his education at his father's request for the next four years after that. Mediocre as his performance had been during those years, he had muddled through somehow with the educational equivalent of an Associate's Degree. _I have no idea how a public high school works,_ he admitted to Sasha.

 _I quit school when I was twelve, so I know less than you do._

Truman shot Sasha a quick glance. _What, really? You just quit?_

 _I chose to take my education into my own hands._

If the way Sasha spoke was any indication, he'd done a damn good job of being his own educator. "Do those files contain class schedules?" he asked.

"They do. It's the first sheet in each file." Sasha began telekinetically pulling the first sheet out of each folder, floating them over to the center of the desk and stacking them in a neat pile. Stokes looked on, mildly impressed. "Well that's one way to prevent paper cuts," she commented wryly.

"I don't need a paper shredder either," Sasha replied.

"Because you can shred them telekinetically?"

"Because I can burn them all."

Stokes gave a soft 'ah' of understanding before addressing Truman. "What exactly are you looking for?"

 _We need Eddie Bodkin's file,_ Sasha thought before Truman could answer Stokes' question. _That is, if we're considering him a person of interest._

"Er…" Truman was not good at speaking to two people at once. "We just want to see if there are any other possible connections these students have to each other." To Sasha, he thought, _Should I ask her for it?_

They both responded at the same time. _No,_ Sasha thought as the principal said "You mean you want to see if that connection is a teacher." She said something else, but he was distracted by Sasha's telepathic voice. _She'll get suspicious if we ask her about a random 10_ _th_ _grader who, to her knowledge, was gone before any of this began. The fewer people who know about Eddie Bodkin, the better._

 _So what should we do?_

"Agent Zanotto?" Principal Stokes was looking at him expectantly.

"Yes?"

 _Look out the window. I can see her car from here._

What did that have to do with anything? The principal's expectant look became one of annoyance and confusion. "Was that 'yes' the answer to my question?"

Her eyes were narrowed and Truman had a feeling that she was about to start lecturing him like he was one of her students. "I didn't…um…" Lord, he could feel his face heating up. "I didn't hear what you asked."

 _Truman, we need to distract her._

 _You're distracting me! Do you know what she asked?_

 _No. I was looking out the window._

Principal Stokes pursed her lips, and then repeated her question. "Do you suspect that one of our teachers could be behind this?"

"We don't have any suspects yet, ma'am," Truman answered, grateful that Sasha had gone silent for the moment. "We've just begun investigating and we need to look into as many angles as we possibly can."

 _Truman. Look out that window and tell me if you think you can set off her car alarm._

 _Why?_

 _Because I can't reach that far and we need a way to get her out of here for a minute so I can get Bodkin's file._

The principal's reserved parking spot was a couple hundred feet away from where they were sitting, but Truman had always had a much longer telekinetic reach that most other psychics. _I could, but can't you make up some lie and have her give it to us? I don't want to damage her car accidently._

 _No. This woman can sense bullshit as easily as we can sense psychic energy. Just poke it hard enough so that the alarm goes off._

As Truman and Sasha were having their mental conversation, Principal Stokes had been expressing her doubts that any of her teachers could have been up to anything suspicious. "I mean, I'm not saying that our teachers and students get along perfectly. I'm sure there are days when any of our staff members would take well behaved zombies over some of the knuckleheads in this pile," she said, gesturing towards the stack of papers. She frowned. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate. Not even the worst of them deserves what they're going through right now."

 _I'm going to ask her some questions. You concentrate on activating that car alarm._ His tone left no room for protest or concerns, and Truman had to admit that this was probably the easiest way to get her out of the room. Out loud, Sasha asked the principal if she knew of any staff members who had special interests.

"Special interests? What do you mean?"

Sasha rephrased his question. "Do you know of anybody with an interest in the paranormal?"

Truman focused his psychic attention on the principal's blue Honda Civic outside. He was going to try poking the car first, as a poke was less likely to accidently break a window. He poked the car as gently as he could. Nothing happened. "Well," the principal replied, "one of the gym teachers is really into that crystal stuff. But I don't think that's really relevant. Do you?"

Sasha than began talking about various psycho-geological minerals, explaining their different properties and their potential relevance to this case, all the while using a whole lot of terms that sounded really cool (even if Truman had no idea what they meant). He poked the car a second time and again, nothing happened. Damn. Was he going to have to put a dent in this woman's car?

Principal Stokes allowed Sasha to finish speaking before making it clear that she didn't believe a single thing that he had just said. "Young man," she said sternly, her lips thin. "Does your agency train you to spout such nonsense? Is this some sort of idiotic interrogation technique? Because I'll have you know-". Her tirade was cut short by a loud, high-pitched honking noise coming from the parking lot. "What- that's my car!" She opened one of her desk drawers with more force than necessary. "It's those damn squirrels,' she muttered, digging through her purse. "Jumping on my car again." She got up, her keys in hand. "They're driving me nuts."

Truman laughed. Stokes looked at him quizzically. "Oh…you said that the squirrels were driving you nuts. I thought that was a joke." The blaring of the car alarm at least spared the three of them from an awkward silence.

"I'll be right back. Excuse me." She walked out of her office, shaking her head.

The top drawer of the file cabinet behind her desk opened the second her door closed. "You got that opened pretty quickly," Truman said, impressed.

"It was unlocked." Sasha walked over to the cabinet to get a closer look at the files within. He located Eddie's file just as the principal arrived in the faculty parking lot. That was good- if she had happened to glance back at her office she probably would've seen them rifling through her file cabinet. "She seems to be handling this well," Truman remarked as Sasha tucked the stolen file into the box with the others.

"Hmm." Sasha shut the cabinet. "She thought that I was a punk and that you were a dope."

Truman shrugged. That was a fair assessment, at least of him anyway. "Were you…did you see anything suspicious in her mind?"

"Her thoughts were nothing out of the ordinary for a middle-aged education professional dealing with an unexplainable paranormal crisis," Sasha replied. The blare of the car alarm stopped. "Her recent memories are equally innocuous."

Truman scratched his beard. "If she was going to organize an attack on her students she probably wouldn't target the good ones. Plus, we don't even know how this is happening."

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Go ahead."

"What's with the beard?"

"I look like a giant toddler without it."

"Ah." Sasha looked up at the clock above the door. "It's almost time for the classes to change," he observed as he levitated his water bottle from off the floor and into his hand.

"Oh. You think we should go see if we can find some of the victims?" Truman glanced out the window. The principal was making her way back to the building. "We can meet her at the entrance."

The bell rang just as they were informing the principal of their plan. "You'll find most of the victims on the second floor of the east wing," she said, pointing to the hallway just to the right of the entrance. A staircase could be seen at the end of the hall, already crowded with students. "We tried keeping the victims corralled in the library but …" She trailed off, putting her hand over her mouth.

"You couldn't stop them from going to their classes," Truman finished. The taste that he had been able to ignore for the last few minutes had suddenly gotten much stronger. He unscrewed the cap of his water bottle.

"Not without injuring them or ourselves." Stokes shook her head. "It was easier to just let them go to class. It's not like they're disrupting anything intentionally."

"Do they go to all of their scheduled classes?" Truman asked. There were students scurrying around them, oddly silent as they made their way through the school.

Stokes watched them, a troubled look on her face. "They're not usually on time because they walk so slowly, but they get there eventually."

"Do they take lunch breaks?"

"Yep. They get in line, they take their trays, and they eat whatever the lunch ladies give them." Stokes tapped her chin, thinking. "However, the ones who had extra-curricular activities did stop going to them. They all just go straight home after school now."

"Alright. We're gonna go see if we can find one of them." Truman paused, his attention caught by a slow-moving student with a red backpack. Was that a victim? The student, sensing that he was being stared at, turned his head. He paled when he saw Truman and Sasha standing with the principal and then ran off; knocking over a trash can in his hurry. The crash startled the nearby students, some of them screaming in fright.

"Oh, jeez," Truman said, scratching the back of his neck. "I didn't mean to scare him."

"That's Hugh Miller. He's always been as skittish as a rabbit." Stokes frowned, the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth getting deeper. "Of course, all of the students have become anxious ever since mid-September, when the police gave up on solving this on their own. It's like I have a hundred Hugh Millers walking around and jumping at their own shadows."

Sasha nudged Truman with his elbow. "We should get moving," he said, his brows furrowed and his voice laced with discomfort. Perhaps he was picking up on something Truman couldn't? _What's wrong?_ he thought.

 _I keep seeing flashes of…a pattern? I'm not certain what it is._ He put a hand on his forehead. _It only appears for a fraction of a second._

Stoke chose that moment to take her leave. "I'll look through those schedules and see if any of those students have anything else in common." Truman gave her a quick "thanks" as she rushed off.

By the time they made it to the second floor of the east wing, the majority of the students had made it to their classrooms. The hall was mostly empty, except for the shuffling forms of five students. They didn't pick their feet up when they walked, and their footsteps were silent, save for the odd squeak here and there as their shoes (all comfy slip-ons) slid on the tile floor.

It felt like there was a toxic, syrupy slime in his mouth, and Truman drank the last of his water in an attempt to wash it down. It didn't help. Sasha wasn't faring much better. He'd taken his glasses off and had put his hand over his eyes, his face a pained grimace. "You okay?"

"That pattern again." Sasha removed his hand and looked at Truman. His eyes were grey and slightly slanted. "It's all I can see anytime I try to read one of their minds," he explained, gesturing at the slow-moving teens.

"What does it look like? Can you describe it?"

"It vaguely resembles a pair of eyes. I think?" He put his glasses back on. "They weren't human eyes, and they kept changing colors. They would be black for a quarter of a second, then red, than violet, than black again." He brushed a strand of hair off of his forehead. "There was also a ring of bright yellow around the…iris? It didn't change color, but it was very grating to look at."

Looking at those images sounded like a great way to trigger a seizure. "Maybe you should cut back on the telepathy for now," he suggested, watching a zombified teen approach. The teen, dressed in a simple sweat suit, stared vacantly ahead, his mouth open.

"Why?" Sasha was focusing all of his telepathic ability on the teen.

"What if you get sick?" Truman also reached out psychically and flinched, the strange pattern strong enough for even his meager telepathy to pick up on. "Jesus!" he exclaimed, his head already hurting from the one-second exposure he had to the teen's mind.

"I'm not going to get sick," Sasha argued, undeterred in his efforts to probe the passing teen's mind. "It looks like this pattern is working as some sort of hypnotic mental block. With enough focus, I may be able to break through it."

"Or you might give yourself a seizure." The teen was now sliding past them. He didn't acknowledge either one of them as he moved. A florescent light flickered above them.

Sasha, still trying to break through the block, winched in pain. The pain didn't stop him from doubling down on his efforts. Oh boy. At this rate, he was going to give himself a stroke. Truman tried reasoning with him. "Sasha, we don't know what that pattern actually is. What if you end up like that guy?" The teen had now passed them by, oblivious to the telepath trying to break into his mind.

Sasha was either intentionally ignoring him or he was too deep in the teen's mind to hear what he was saying. Shit. Time to act. Truman telekinetically picked the skinny German up, the sudden action severing his connection to the student. "W-What!" His voice, usually pretty deep and inflectionless, came out in a startled shriek. He regained his composure quickly. "Put me down," he ordered, and Truman did as the passing teen shuffled off into a nearby classroom.

Sasha straightened his jacket, deliberately not looking at Truman. A bit of blood was coming out of his nose. "You got…uh." Truman gestured weakly at his own nose. Sasha reached into his pocket, pulling out a plastic packet of tissues. He casually wiped the blood away and discarded the used tissue into a nearby trashcan. He opened his mouth, as though he was going to say something, but then closed it, changing his mind. Truman put his hands in his pockets, unsure if he'd gone too far by stopping Sasha. He may have been the senior Psychonaut, but he didn't outrank him- had he overstepped his boundaries? On the other hand, any psychic effort that caused a nosebleed was not something to take lightly. Sasha's face was its usual stoic mask, but he was squeezing the packet of tissues pretty hard. He was frustrated, but Truman couldn't tell if that frustration was directed at himself or at Truman for interrupting him. Perhaps it was both.

A girl's chattering caught both agents' attention, and the incident was put aside for the moment. Two girls were at the far end of the hall, one tall with honey-blonde hair put up in a high pony-tail, the other a short brunette with glasses. The brunette was the speaker, and the conversation was one-sided. Their arms were linked- kind of. The blonde's arms were at her sides, with the brunette's left arm hooked around her right arm. Their gait was odd- they were both moving slowly, but it almost seemed like the brunette was letting the blonde drag her forward. The blonde was staring straight ahead, and had it not been so obvious that she was one of the victims he would have thought that she was staring at them. As it was, it appeared that she didn't even register her friend's presence right next to her. The blonde was wearing some sort of sport's jersey with the school's mascot emblazoned on it. There had been five victims who were athletes, but only one of them had been female. Could that be Cheyanne Walker?

They were heading his and Sasha's way, whoever they were. The brunette stopped talking upon seeing them, tightening her grip on her friend's arm. She stopped, briefly, her eyes wide and wary behind her glasses, but the blonde dragged her forward after a second. She averted her eyes as they passed them by, a sweet, floral scent coming off of one of them.

 _Smells like roses and vanilla,_ Truman observed.

Sasha wrinkled his nose. _It's a little strong._

The girls entered a classroom a little further down and across the hall from where they were standing. "So…should we go back downstairs? I think we've seen all there is to see up here," Truman said.

"That girl with the glasses is going to come back out in a minute," Sasha said. "Her name is Diane Garcia. And the other one is Cheyanne Walker."

The report on Cheyanne had said that she'd been at a friend's house the last time she had been seen in a normal state of mind. Diane Garcia must have been that friend. "You think we should talk to her? She seemed kind of scared of us," Truman said.

"She's spent quite a bit of time with one of the victims during last two months. She may have some insights that the Sheriff and the Principal do not." Sasha leaned back against the row of lockers behind them. "It's worth a try."

After a minute of waiting, Diane exited the classroom. She didn't appear too happy to see that Truman and Sasha were still standing there. Truman gave her a friendly smile. "I'm just going to class," she said nervously, though she didn't move from her spot in front of the door. Her accent was different, her drawl slower and longer that of the other people they had spoken too in this town.

"Are you Diane Garcia?" Truman asked, trying to sound as non-threatening as possible."Can we talk to you for a second?" Diane bit her lip and shrank back against the door, looking very much like she wanted to run back in and hide. It was then that he realized that she had no idea who they were because they hadn't actually introduced themselves. Two strange men just hanging out in the hall would be cause for concern for any teen girl even during normal circumstances. _Man, I am dumb as hell,_ he thought as he pulled out his badge, hoping to salvage the situation. "We're with the Psychonauts," he explained. "We're trying to find out what happened to your friend."

The explanation seemed to ease her nervousness a bit. She relaxed her shoulders. "I already told the police everything I know about…about the last time I saw her when she still Cheyanne. But I'll talk to you," she said, her voice wavering slightly, "if it'll help."

She was putting on a brave front. "We've already read through the witness reports," he said gently. "But, I'm going to be honest. The questions we're going to ask you might sound a little strange or nonsensical to you. But just bear with us, okay? We're here to help."

Diane swallowed and stepped away from the door. "Okay," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"The last time you saw Cheyanne acting normally was on August 28th, right?"

Diane nodded. "We were hanging out at my house after school. I don't even remember what we were doing, exactly." She crossed her arms around her chest, looking him right in the eye. "And no, we weren't doing any drugs, so don't even ask!"

"I, uh, wasn't going to."

"The F.B.I. guy wouldn't stop pestering me about it."

"The Psychonauts don't usually deal with narcotics, miss."

"What do you guys deal with then? Are you like ghost hunters or something?"

"We specialize mainly in paranormal investigations, although I don't think we've ever hunted any ghosts." The Psychonauts also worked in espionage and counter-terrorism, but he didn't think that Diane needed to know about any of that.

Diane shuffled her feet. "So what's happening with Cheyanne and the others…it's not a natural thing?"

Truman wasn't sure how to answer that without scaring her further. "I can't really get into the details, but it sure looks that way." He hoped that wasn't too much information.

Diane was quiet for a moment, her wide-eyed gaze shifting from Truman to Sasha and then down the hall. He considered just letting her go, if only because she looked so upset, but then she spoke. "Cheyanne left my house at around 7:30 that night. It's a twenty minute walk from my place to hers, but it was still light out and she always walked home like that and we didn't think anything would happen to her because this is a small town and everybody knows everybody and I don't how she-" Diane choked back a sob, her eyes filling with tears. Sasha wordlessly handed her his packet of tissues. She put her glasses on her head and wiped her eyes with a tissue. "Thank you," she said, sniffling.

"Tell me about Cheyanne," Truman said after Diane had regained her composure. "What was-What's she like?"

Diane had already been asked this question, and she had a response lined up. "She didn't have any enemies. Nobody was out to get her. She was the niceest person I knew and she was my best friend." She blew her nose. "Is my best friend," she corrected.

"Did she ever complain about any of her teachers? Or about any of the other staff here?"

"No. But she wasn't really the type to complain if somebody annoyed her." She squeezed the packet of tissues, the plastic making a soft crinkling sound. "She always looked on the bright side of things. If she could talk right now, she'd probably say something like 'well, at least I'm finally getting enough sleep!'" She tried to chuckle, but it came out sounding more like a whimper.

Truman's other missions had been team-based stings on psychic terrorist cells, where he'd been brought along as extra muscle. He didn't particularly enjoy fighting, but he had to admit that knocking some thug into a wall was a lot easier than standing in front of this poor girl who was on the verge of a breakdown. And there was no way that she was the only one- every victim here was somebody's child, somebody's sibling, somebody's friend, somebody's student- and their fate currently rested on the shoulders of a rookie agent and the Vice-Head's awkward lump of a son.

God help this town.

No. This was not the time to start thinking about all the ways he could screw this up. He could save that for later. "How about you? You're a junior, right? Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary? Or seen anybody acting weird?"

Diane shook her head. "I've been kind of spacey lately, to be honest."

That was alarming. In her distressed state the culprit-whatever it was- could easily sneak up on her. "You aren't going anywhere by yourself, are you?" From what they had gathered from the police reports, all of the victims had supposedly been by themselves before they had been discovered in their stupor.

"The only time my parents let me out of their sight is when I'm at school," Diane said. "If my mom could put me on a leash, she would. My dad wants to send me back to Texas until this whole thing blows over, but…" She turned away, her eyes on the classroom she had exited. Cheyanne could be seen through glass plane of the door, sitting in the front row. "I couldn't leave her. Not like that."

"You two are really close," Truman said, touched by her loyalty. From what he had seen, no other victims had any friends willing to be near them in their zombified state.

Diane didn't look away from the classroom. "She bought me this rose-scented body spray from Victoria's Secret the week before she was…you know. I've been spraying it on her, because I thought that maybe she'd smell it and remember me." She switched her gaze from the door to her shoes. "But that's stupid, isn't it? It hasn't worked. Nothing has."

"It's not stupid. Studies have shown that memories and emotions can be triggered by sensory cues," Sasha said. He spoke in his usual blunt, matter-of-fact way, and Truman supposed that this was a close to comforting as Sasha would get.

"Yeah, and you've been talking to her a lot," Truman added. "They say that coma victims respond pretty well to hearing their friends and family talk. So don't give up on it yet." Of course, Cheyanne wasn't in a coma-it looked like she was in some sort of hypnotic trance, caused by whoever or whatever had placed that strange pattern in her mind. It was unlikely that she would be brought back to her old self without the aid of a counter-hypnotism specialist. But Diane's efforts probably made her feel less helpless in the face of such awful circumstances, and it couldn't hurt her to continue them, so long as her parents were being as protective of her as she claimed they were.

Diane continued to gaze down at her shoes, chewing on her lip. "I should probably go to class," she said abruptly.

"Uh, wait, I have one last question," Truman said before she could walk away. She looked up at them, her tears gone but her eyes and nose still red. "Do you have any idea what the deal was with the Otterpops?"

"There isn't some weird new popsicle drug going around!" Diane snapped, "I already told the F.B.I that!"

"Okay, we believe you! We don't think anyone's doing any drugs," Truman assured hastily, "But it's just strange that the early victims were so fixated on them."

"Yeah, it was," Diane muttered. "But I really don't know what all that was about. Can I go now, please?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Thanks for your time."

She took a few steps away from them, and then paused, lingering in the hallway, before turning back towards them. "You guys will help her, right? You'll solve this?"

Sasha spoke before he could. "Miss, we are not the F.B.I. We are better equipped to handle this than they are." Was that a hint of scorn in his voice? "We certainly aren't going to be so quick to write this off as 'drugs' and leave it at that."

Diane seemed to take heart from these words. She offered them both a weak smile before she headed off, her classroom only four doors down. Truman sighed the second she was out of sight. Talk about pressure. Chasing down petty terrorists was definitely easier than this.

If Sasha feeling any doubt or uncertainly about his ability to solve this case, he didn't show it. "She took my tissues," he stated plainly, before walking back towards the stairs.


	4. Chapter 4

Principal Stokes had finished skimming through the schedules by the time they returned to her office. She didn't have much that she thought would be useful to them-just the names of two teachers who had classes with each of the victims. One was Mrs. Baker, a sixty-four year old history teacher one year away from retirement who was reportedly well-liked by the student population. The other was Anton Papadonkus, who taught both the normal junior-level English class and AP. American literature.

That name- Papadonkus- sounded vaguely familiar, but Truman couldn't place where he had heard it. He inquired about Mr. Papadonkus' relationship with his students. "He does his job well enough," Principal Stokes said, "but I don't think that he's very popular with the kids."

"Do they complain about him?"

"Students will complain about all of their teachers for one reason or another. But Mr. Papadonkus does have a tendency to dole out the detentions at the slightest misstep." She slid the schedules into the file box, not bothering to put them back into their individual files, which was a relief because she otherwise may have spotted the one they had stolen. "I admit there have been a few occasions where I've had to intervene on a student's behalf."

"And what did you think of him personally?"

Stokes shrugged. "I don't socialize with him all that often. He's got this pretentious air about him. Like he thinks he's too good for this town. That always rubbed me the wrong way."

"Is he writing a novel, by any chance?" Sasha asked suddenly.

Stokes blinked in surprise. "Yes, he is. He never shuts up about it." She frowned at Sasha suspiciously. "How…how did you know that?"

"You said that he was a pretentious English teacher," Sasha answered, unfazed by her accusatory tone. "You don't need to be psychic to make that connection."

"Oh…right, of course. I wasn't…" She trailed off awkwardly.

"We should probably talk to these teachers," Truman said before Stokes could start stammering out apologies.

"Talking to Mrs. Baker will not be a problem, but I'm afraid that Mr. Papadonkus is away for the weekend," Principal Stokes informed them. "There's a substitute in his place."

That wasn't suspicious. Not at all.

"Why's he out?" Truman asked.

"His parents own a cabin near Piedmont," Stokes explained. "He always goes there when he gets stuck on his writing, because nature supposedly inspires him. Or that's what he says, anyway." She shook her head. "It's actually a real pain, because he always gives us short notice when he does it."

"He does this a lot?"

"Yes. I didn't mention it at first because it's something that he's been doing for years." She looked down at her hands, clasped on her desk. "The timing is…strange."

Truman nodded, taking in the new information. "Did he sound any different when he called out than he normally did?"

Stokes sighed. "I don't know. I have had a lot on my mind, and I really don't think that that conversation lasted longer than a minute." She bit her thumbnail, looking troubled. "Do you… do you think that he's got something to do with this somehow?"

It was too soon to tell. A widely disliked English teacher who had regular contact with all of the victims suddenly rushing off shortly before their arrival was certainly worth looking into. However, those things in and of themselves did not necessarily mean that Mr. Papadonkus was the culprit, and there was a chance that his absence at this time could have been a coincidence.

At the moment, all Truman could do was thank the Principal for her time and hope that they would be able to get to the bottom of it soon.

* * *

One thing that they did know was that the victims were definitely in some sort of hypnotized state, which was why Truman was trying to get in contact with the agency's hypnosis specialist.

He was having very little luck. _So Agent Tzam is still in the bathroom?_ Although he could not actually see Agent Rossi, Truman had a feeling that she was shrugging apathetically. Katya Rossi had one of the furthest telepathic reaches in the world, and was pretty much able to communicate with any agent located on the North American continent. She also did not like to do much of anything, so the role of communications tech suited her just fine. _Yep,_ she replied. Her monotone made Sasha Nein sound expressive. _He's throwing up._

Again? _Well…when he gets done, can you tell him to contact us? We might need his assistance here._

 _Alright._

 _Okay._ A few seconds passed. _You won't forget, right?_

 _I won't._

 _Um, okay. Thanks. Bye._ He severed the telepathic link. "Agent Rossi is going to let Agent Tzam know that we need him," he said to Sasha. They were sitting across from each other at the end of a long row table in the school cafeteria. It was just after one, and the cafeteria was mostly empty, with only the staff and some stragglers from the last lunch period left in the room. Two hours had passed since they'd spoken to the principal, and they'd spend most of it wandering around the school, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Aside from the victims shuffling through the halls, they'd found nothing supernatural within the school, or out on the surrounding grounds.

They'd also spoken to Mrs. Baker, spry and still passionate about her work despite her age. After speaking with her for five minutes, they could say with confidence that she had nothing to do with whatever was plaguing this town.

Truman had asked her about Mr. Papadonkus. "That feller's a real piece of work," she had said disdainfully. "He used to correct my grammar all the time, 'til I threatened to beat his damn fool head in."

The young lady substituting his class had an equally low opinion of him. "I only met him once," she had said, "and he talked down to me like I was a child."

"Tell Agent Rossi not to bother," Sasha said, inspecting a fruit cup on his tray. "I've already contacted Agent Tzam myself." He peeled the plastic cover off of the cup, having deemed its contents edible.

"You did?" Truman looked at him skeptically, watching as he telekinetically speared a peach slice with his fork. "Agent Rossi told me that he was throwing up."

"He was," Sasha replied after swallowing. "I briefed him on our findings and he told me that he would see if he could get here by tomorrow. Between dry heaves, of course."

"Oh." Truman finished the last of his milk. The food here, while not stellar by any means, had tasted better than he had expected, and the school's pizza had been a welcome distraction from the foul taste still in the back of his mouth. "That guy's always sick. I wonder if he has a stomach problem."

"He's addicted to cough syrup," Sasha said before biting into another peach slice.

"Cough syrup?" Was Sasha messing with him? "You can get addicted to that?"

Sasha nodded. "Cough syrup, when ingested in recreational doses, can produce a high similar to that of PCP."

"And that's why he's always vomiting?"

"Yes. I would wager that that man cannot keep anything down for long."

The fact that a senior agent who worked in a highly specialized field was regularly getting fucked up on a PCP equivalent while at work should have been a shocking revelation. Truman, however, was familiar enough with the work-culture of the Psychonauts to only feel mild surprise. "I hope he sorts himself out before coming down here."

Sasha gave a half-shrug before asking what their next course of action was.

"We should definitely check out this Papadonkus guy," Truman said. "Right now, he's our only potential lead. Unless we're counting Eddie Bodkin…wait…"

"What?" Sasha asked as he physically picked up his carton of milk, because apparently using telekinesis to drink was too weird even for him.

"Randy told me that Eddie had complained about a teacher that he had called 'Dickhead Donkus' within the past few months," Truman said. That must've been why the name had sounded so familiar to him earlier. "I think he was talking about Mr. Papadonkus."

Sasha put down his milk and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm. That nickname is pretty derogatory. If Mr. Papadonkus' ego is as over-inflated as we've been led to believe, I imagine that he'd highly resent being called that."

"And if all of the students hate him, then he probably gets called that a lot," Truman added.

"A name like Papadonkus is just ripe for all sorts of ridicule," Sasha said. "So let's say that he is our culprit. We have revenge against unruly students as a motive. How is he accomplishing this?"

Truman stared down at his tray, thinking. "Maybe he's secretly psychic? No, that wouldn't explain that pattern, or this weird energy we're picking up on." There were psychics who had the ability to mesmerize others, but that power was rare, and it would likely take more than one psychic to maintain a hold on twenty-seven people at once. "Shit, maybe he and the Flatwoods Monster have teamed up," Truman joked.

A loud clatter coming from the kitchen cut off whatever Sasha had been about to say next. _It's not the Flatwoods Monster,_ Sasha thought over the commotion. _But what if it was something non-human?_

 _Like what?_

 _I don't know. But this energy just doesn't feel like a regular psychic's. It feels…inhuman, and toxic._

Toxic was definitely a word that Truman would use to describe this energy. " _The energy is coming off the victims. Maybe if we'll find more of it we figure out where some of these kids were attacked?_

One of the lunch ladies began shouting, and another swore back at her. Sasha frowned and stood up. _We've gathered all the information that we can in this place. Let's leave before they start slinging food at each other._

* * *

"It's not the same," Sasha said as they drove to the home of the first witness they planned on interviewing. "The eye shape is similar, but they weren't glowing red." He closed the binder and tossed it onto the backseat. "Plus, none of those articles ever mentioned the Flatwoods Monster having any sort of hypnotic ability."That had been about what Truman had expected to hear, but he figured that it couldn't hurt to check.

They arrived at the home of Christopher Sealoft a few minutes later. Chris Sealoft was, like Cheyanne, an honor roll student, who had no record of getting into any sort of trouble at school or with the law. They'd chosen to come here first because the circumstances of Chris' affliction were unique. Most of the other victims had been supposedly stricken while out on their own, outside of their homes. Chris, however, had gone to bed one night perfectly fine and had stumbled down the steps in a zombiefied stupor the next morning.

"The window was open that morning," Mr. Sealoft said as he and his wife led them to their son's bedroom. Framed photographs of the Sealoft family hung on the walls. Each family member, from Mr. Sealoft down to the youngest girl that peeked out at them warily from behind her bedroom door, was big, blond, and bespectacled. Chris himself was no exception, as indicated by the most recent school photo of him. He looked more like a football player than a proper bookworm, but according to his file, he didn't participate in any school sports programs.

His room was typical of that of a nerdy sixteen year-old boy. The room was small and a bit cramped, barely able to fit the dresser, bed, bookshelf, and writing space that took up most of the floor space. The desk, placed to immediate left of the entrance, looked like it hadn't been used recently, the chair being pushed in. The bed was unmade, with half of the quilt being on the floor. The books on the bookshelf were a mix of non-fiction and sci-fi, with a few college-prep textbooks thrown in. The top of the dresser was covered with awards and trophies, all of them related to academic achievements.

That taste was back, not quite as strong as it had been at the school, but still there, lingering in the back of his throat. "Did your son usually leave the window open at night?" Truman asked as Sasha approached the bookshelf. The window wasn't too big, but a person could squeeze through it if they tried.

"We had an Indian summer this year," Mrs. Sealoft answered. "It was a little stuffy that night."

There was only one window in this room and it was between the dresser and the bed. "And you didn't hear any fighting? Your son didn't scream?"

"No sir," Mr. Sealoft said as he pushed passed his wife and crossed over to the window. "And unless this person was Spiderman, I can't see how anyone could've even gotten up to this window." Truman looked down, examining the house's white siding. It was too flat for anyone to be able to climb up through normal means, unless the person had carried a ladder over with them, which was something that would not have gone unnoticed.

 _It's only two stories up,_ Sasha noted from the bookcase. He was thumbing through a William Gibson novel. _Any psychic could easily levitate that high._

 _You mean like Eddie?_

 _Maybe like Eddie. Maybe somebody else._ Sasha put the book back. "Is this where your son spends most of his time?"

"He's always spent most of this time up here, either reading, studying, or writing." Mr. Sealoft moved over to the dresser and picked up a glass trophy. "My boy's one hell of a writer," he said, pride and regret lacing his tone. He handed the trophy to Truman. Inscribed in the glass were the words 'West Virginia Writer's Association: Best Short Story.' "He beat a whole bunch of adult writers. Got published in a journal too." He took back the trophy and stared at it sadly. "Of course, he don't write no more," he said, sighing as he put the trophy back in its place. "He just sits on his bed until dinnertime, and then he comes back up and sits some more."

Truman swallowed, the pressure that he had felt while talking to Diane Garcia rearing back up, even more intense than before. "D-Did your son have any enemies?" he sputtered out abruptly, struggling to stomp down the feeling of impending failure welling up within him.

Sasha frowned in his direction, but didn't say anything, observing the window instead.

"Chris was a straight-A student and he was too big to bully," Mrs. Sealoft said, still standing in the doorway. She twisted the hem of her blouse anxiously.

"You fellas don't have to put up a front," Mr. Sealoft said grimly. He looked Truman dead in the eye. "Everyone in here knows that what's happening ain't natural."

There was no point in lying, so Truman nodded. Sasha walked behind him, taking off his black leather gloves.

"I got three other kids and my wife, all hold up in the living room night after night," Mr. Sealoft continued. "Me and my wife take turns staying up with the Remington. But…" he trailed off, starring out the window. Truman followed his gaze and noticed a tall tree close to the fence that separated the Sealoft's yard from their neighbor's. The tree wasn't in the Sealoft's yard, but it was close enough to the Chris' bedroom window to make it a possible witness.

"I haven't been sleeping much," Mr. Sealoft said suddenly, breaking the brief silence that had fallen. "Been reading my son's stories. He's writing this amazing book. I've never been one for much reading, but even I can tell that it's a real gem." There was a sheen of unshed tears in his eyes. "I'd really like it if he could finish it."

* * *

"Uh…" Truman and Sasha were standing outside the Buick, having collected all the of the witness testimony that they could from the Sealofts. "Before we go, can we, um…" Sasha was looking at him expectantly, his face unreadable. "This is going to sound kinda weird, but-"

"You want to interrogate that tree over there," Sasha said, his tone neither mocking nor skeptical.

Truman nodded, somewhat sheepishly.

"Alright, let's go." He started towards the neighbor's house, and Truman followed him, surprised at how willing Sasha was to go along with it. Herbaphony wasn't a common ability among psychics, and there weren't many uses for it in the field.

There weren't any cars in the driveway, which was good, because Truman wouldn't have known how to even begin explaining what they were going to do to a non-psychic. They levitated themselves over the side gate and were immediately met by no less than seven feline gazes. Apparently, the person that owned this property was a cat person. They were lounging all over the backyard, none of them too happy to have their afternoon naps interrupted by two strange humans. The leader, a big, brown Maine Coon tabby approached, ears pushed back and tail straight up and twitching.

Truman put his hands up defensively. "We don't want any trouble, pals. We're just here to talk to your…tree over there," he said.

The Maine Coon growled, unwilling to be placated with words because he was a cat and therefore unable to understand Truman's human words. The other members of his posse came toward him, just as angry and aggressive, and they quickly formed a defensive line of ferocious felines.

Sasha fired a warning shot, the psi-blast landing just in front of the Maine Coon. The cats all jumped and moved back a little, but their line didn't break and the shot only strengthened their resolve to rid themselves of the perceived threat. "You go talk to the tree," Sasha ordered, putting two fingers to his forehead and getting into a combative stance. "I'll hold them off."

Truman looked uneasily at the cat line, and then at his partner. "Please don't kill this person's pets."

Sasha stayed focused on his opponents. "I will do my best to avoid casualties," he said as a white shorthair hissed at him, "but I can make no promises."

Oh jeez. Truman hurried over to the tree, hoping that he'd be able to do this before he had to witness Sasha either commit murder or get torn to shreds.

The tree, an Ailanthus that had taken root in the back corner of this person's yard, had a pretty good view of Chris Sealoft's second story window. Although plants could not actually 'see' in the way that humans could, they still had their own way of perceiving the world around them, and there was a chance that this tree may have information relevant to this case.

The Ailanthus was about twenty feet tall, which meant that it was still young and growing by the standards of its kind. Its oval-shaped leaves were just turning from green to yellow, and the bark was light grey and appeared smooth to the touch. Truman was quickly able to form a connection. _Hello,_ he greeted politely.

 _Hi! Hello!_ the Ailanthus greeted back, its tone one of pleasant surprise. _Well I'll be! I've never spoken to a human before! Where are you from?_

 _Upstate New York,_ Truman replied. _Near Lake Erie._

 _I've got cousins up that way!_ The Ailanthus sounded very proud of that fact. _My name's Changying._

 _I'm Truman._

 _So what can I do for you, Truman? I hope you're not here to chop me down!_

 _Ah, no, I'm not._

 _Good to know! That would've been a waste of time on your part anyway!_

 _Is that right?_

 _Cut one of my kind down and we just grow back faster and stronger,_ the Ailanthus said, radiating pride. _We're quite resilient, you see._

 _I can see that._ A loud shriek came from behind him. Truman turned just in time to see an orange tabby fly through the air and land gracefully on its feet. It promptly got back into line and the standoff continued.

 _Oh god,_ Truman thought.

 _My cats are very protective of me,_ Changying said. _Not that I need protection._

 _They're your cats?_

 _They sharpen their claws on my trunk and they climb on me for fun. I'd say that makes them mine._

 _Oh. Well, the reason I'm here is because I wanted to ask you if you've noticed anything strange around here lately,'_ Truman thought, glancing back at Sasha. It looked like he had things under control at the moment, but Truman figured that he better move things along before a bloodbath could occur.

 _Okay! Go ahead and ask me!_

 _Have you noticed anything strange around here lately?_

 _I sure have! Been a lot of weird things going on! I've been sprouting around this place for decades and I've gotta say, this has been one of the strangest years I've experienced. And I've experienced a lot of years, in some form or another._

This was helpful to hear, but Truman needed Changying to be more a bit more specific. _Can you recall sensing anything especially odd happening about…uh, three weeks ago?_

 _Oh! Yes! That was the weirdest thing, let me tell you! This big cluster of butterflies was just flying around here!_

Butterflies? _What do you mean? What kind of butterflies were they?_

 _You know, I'm not quite sure. They didn't come near me; they went into that structure next door. But they flew really close together, like they were one big butterfly._

 _How long were they in the structure?_

 _Not too long, they went in and then they went out and flew off. And they had the worst stench to them! Blech, just remembering it makes me want to sprout thorns!_

It seemed like Changying had actually caught sight of their culprit, although he didn't think that the tree's description of it being a rouge group of butterflies was accurate. It could be that Changying was picking up on some sort of insect-like energy and had merely mistaken what it was due to how unusual the circumstances were. So what did that mean? Was their unidentified paranormal entity some kind of giant bug?If so, why was it hypnotizing the students? Was it working with someone? _You've been real helpful,_ Truman thought. _I have one more question. Has there been anyone wandering around town that's similar to me and my partner?_

 _I…hmm._ The Ailanthus paused. _I haven't sensed anybody, no_ _. But maybe my cousins in town have. Try talking to them!_

 _You guys are all over this place, huh?_

 _Oh yes, we've maintained quite the roothold in this area for a long time._ Had Changying been a person, they probably would've been puffing their chest out proudly. _I'll send a message out to the others and let them know you guys will be dropping by. They'll get a real kick out of actually talking to a human!_

 _Thanks, I'd really appreciate that._ He looked back at Sasha again to find that the cats were now approaching him in unison, trying to intimidate him into backing up against the fence. Sasha, however, was determined to stand his ground. _I have to go. But thanks so much for your help! It's been nice talking to you._

 _You're welcome, friend! Tell my cousins up north that I said hi!_

 _Will do!_ Truman thought as he rushed away, reaching Sasha just as the Maine Coon pounced.

* * *

"How exactly does a tree perceive sight?" Sasha asked five minutes later when they were back in the Buick after successfully fleeing the cat gang. They'd escaped relatively unharmed, although the sleeve of Truman's jacket had sustained some minor damage.

"Um…" Truman had just finished relaying the information that Changying had given him, and though he hadn't been aware of how his partner would react to the outlandish story, he certainly hadn't expected the first question out of the man's mouth to relate to botanical science. "They don't see like we do. But they do have sight. Basic sight, like, they can tell red and blue apart and stuff like that."

"I would think that they'd also be sensitive to light as well," Sasha added thoughtfully.

"Yeah, that too."

"I used clairvoyance on you while you were communicating with that tree," Sasha continued. "I wasn't able to hear a lot, but it sounded as though you were speaking to a person native to this town. How is that possible?"

Truman honestly had no idea. While he was pretty adept at using his herbaphony when needed, the actual science behind it was not something that was well understood even among dedicated researchers. He shrugged weakly in response to Sasha's question. "It's just something that I can do. I don't really know much about how it works," he said, embarrassed about his lack of knowledge. "Sorry."

"Stop apologizing. You said that Changying was going to send out a message to their cousins in town, right?"

"Yeah, it's a pheromone signal thing."

"Perhaps herbaphonists are able to translate these pheromone signals into an understandable language," Sasha theorized, looking back at Changying. "It's similar to how animal telepathists can communicate with beings that have no concept of a human language." He turned back towards Truman. "Herbaphony would have to be a bit more complex, considering as plants do not have any sort of brain structure."

"I…um, wow, that's…" Truman was honestly shocked that at how much that made sense. "That's probably exactly how it works." Man, Sasha was really smart. Truman had been using herbaphony for nearly his entire life and he'd never even considered any of that.

"It's just a hypothesis for now," Sasha said, though he sounded pleased that Truman seemed to think that his idea had merit. "I'd have to observe the ability in use more often before I come to any definite conclusions."

Did…did that mean that Sasha was going to be observing him? Oh God. Truman did not know how to feel about that. "You're…uh, you're really interested in this," he said as he fumbled with the keys.

"I've never met anybody who could speak to plants," Sasha said. "It's quite a fascinating skill."

Truman put turned the keys in the ignition and the Buick sputtered to life. "You really think so?" he asked, glancing at Sasha.

"Plants are more foreign to us than animals. Even the simplest fish has a rudimentary mind that can be read and explored. Can you even use clairvoyance on a plant?"

"I don't think so, but I've never tried."

"Hmm. Try it next time and let me know if it works."

Truman did not really think that he'd be able to do it (after all, a plant did not have a brain for him to transfer his conscious into), but he agreed to try anyway, if only because Sasha really seemed to want to understand his power better. It was strange- nobody else had ever said they'd found his herbaphony fascinating before. He'd been asked about it casually, yes, and once in a while someone would ask him for advice about their own gardening problems, but Sasha was the first person to show a real, genuine interest in it.

Was there a chance that Sasha was only pretending to care in order to get close to Truman, and by extension, his father? It had happened before, but he really didn't think it was the case this time. Sasha was too…well; he'd only known Sasha for a short time admittedly, and some people were good at hiding their true intentions, but Sasha seemed like the sort of person who wouldn't have the patience for that sort of long-term deception. Sasha wasn't always honest, but he was blunt, and he didn't like to waste time on things that weren't relevant to his interests.

But who knew? Maybe Truman was wrong and all this was just him projecting his desires onto a guy he'd met last week.

"Do you think that it would be possible for you to teach that skill to another psychic?" Sasha asked.

Yet another question that Truman could not give a good answer to. "It's a genetic thing, I think, so I don't really know."

Sasha rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You inherited it from your mother's side of the family." It was a statement, not a question, but Truman gave an affirmative answer anyway. "A shame. A power like that would be very useful for my own studies."

Truman looked away, feeling heat creep up the back of his neck. "I've always been told that it wasn't very useful outside of a garden."

If Sasha noticed the blush, he didn't say anything about it. "Whoever told you that was both incorrect and close-minded. Your herbaphony has allowed us to confirm that there is a U.P.E lurking around and attacking the students. It's our best lead right now."

Lead? Oh right, they were on a mission that they really needed to get back to work on. "What did you think of Changying's story?"

"It's obviously not a group of normal butterflies," Sasha said as he telekinetically grabbed the file that they had smuggled out of the school behind the Principal's back. "However, an enormous bug-like creature makes sense." He opened the file, reading its contents as he spoke. "There were scratches on the window in Chris' bedroom. I attempted to use psychometry on them to see if I could find out what made them."

"Did you?"

"I didn't think so at first," he said, his eyes still scanning a sheet of paper in the file. "I had this vision of a blurry, almost mosaic-like image. I thought that perhaps too much time had gone by for me to be able to pick up on anything clearly. But I now realize that I had caught a glimpse of the world through our culprit's eyes." Finished with the sheet he was reading, he flipped it over and started on the next. "It has compound vision, whatever it is."

"That does line up with the butterfly thing," Truman said as he pulled out of the parking spot outside the Sealoft's house. "So we got us a U.P.E that has a good chance of being some sort of insect-like life form. Why is it doing this?"

"It's working with somebody," Sasha said. He sounded so certain that Truman had to wonder if he'd missed some key piece of evidence. Sasha was thankfully quick to let him know that he was just theorizing. "The victims are all from a very specific population. If this U.P.E is hypnotizing people, what reason does it have to go after the juniors at Braxton County High? Wouldn't it just attack anybody unfortunate enough to cross its path?"

Their U.P.E may not have had any reason to target the Class of 2000 specifically, but Truman could think of one person that might. "Mr. Papadonkus' students hate him, and from what we've heard the feeling is mutual." He frowned as he stopped at an intersection. "But how would an ordinary English teacher be able to control a creature that can easily subdue twenty-seven people?"

Sasha closed Eddie's file. "Perhaps he has a middleman working for him," he said, pointing at the file in his hand.

Truman hit the gas pedal, a sinking feeling in his gut. He had been hoping that Eddie wouldn't be involved in this, if only because his situation was difficult enough as it was. "Why do you think that?"

"A psychic's mental defenses are much stronger than that of a non-psychic's. Even a newly awakened psychic like Eddie would have some resistance to whatever hypnotic power this U.P.E has." He tossed the file into the back seat.

"But why would he help Mr. Papadonkus? He doesn't like the guy at all, and it didn't sound like he hated his peers, if what Randy told me about him was accurate."

"Blackmail," Sasha answered simply. "Randy Ratowski may not have been the only one to catch Eddie using his powers."

Jesus. Randy had said that he thought that Eddie was being forced to go along with an evil plot, but Truman hadn't actually thought that it could be true. He felt a new wave of pity for the teenager. "This is all just more theorizing, right? We don't actually have any evidence that this is what's happening."

"No, not yet. But I think that the only way to find out is to visit Anton Papadonkus' residence," Sasha said as he looked out the window. "So you're going to need to turn around at some point, because he lives on the other side of town."

Truman almost asked how Sasha knew where Mr. Papadonkus lived, but then stopped himself when he remembered that Sasha was a skilled telepath who had little regard for the mental privacy of others. He must've gotten the address by digging through Principal Stokes' mind. "The Principal said that he was out of town," he said instead, as he looked for a good place to make a u-turn.

"We're not going to talk to him. You're going to talk to the foliage in his yard," Sasha replied.

There was an empty driveway up ahead that Truman could pull into. "Oh. That's a good idea." He should've thought of it himself, really, but it still felt kind of weird to use his herbaphony out in the field. "We were supposed to talk to more witnesses though. They might be expecting us."

Sasha waved Truman's concern away. "Those witnesses have already reported everything they know to everyone who investigated before us. What new information could they possibly have? Our best option right now is to track down the U.P.E We find it, we find out what's really going on." He rested his chin on his hand, his gaze out the window. "Plus, while it's obvious that this creature has made an effort to remain undetected by humans, it's unlikely that it would try to remain hidden from plants."

Truman pulled into the driveway, thinking as he slowly backed out. Sasha was definitely right about that- herbaphony wasn't a common ability, and it was unlikely that anyone, be it U.P. E or human collaborator, would take measures to defend against it. "If we do this," Truman said as pulled back out onto the road, "I'm thinking we should probably stick to interviewing the trees. They have a better sight range, and if this thing is a bug, it's probably perched on one at some point."

Sasha nodded. "Can testimony from a tree be used in court?" he asked as they headed back down the road.

"I've never heard of it happening before," Truman replied. "But I kind of doubt it."


	5. Chapter 5

Unfortunately, it appeared that things weren't going to be as simple as they had hoped.

Anton Papadonkus lived in a small suburb located in the southern part of town. As they'd driven up, Truman had been dismayed to see that there weren't any trees visible in either the teacher's yard, or in the yards of his neighbors. The closest tree was planted near the house across from Mr. Papadonkus' neighbor on the right side. That Tulip tree, a skinny little ornamental thing, had curtly informed them that they had not seen anything unusual in the past couple of months, and had had little interest in talking to Truman.

 _I've got my own problems_ , the Tulip tree said, an undercurrent of irritation in their tone. _I don't care to be a part of this, so if you could just move along now, I'd really appreciate it._

A quick look at the Tulip Tree's trunk revealed just what their trouble was. Small round holes dotted their trunk here and there, indicating the presence of termites. Truman expressed his sympathies to the poor tree and took his leave.

Sasha, waiting for him by the parked Buick, instantly gleaned that Truman had learned nothing from the Tulip Tree. They stood there for a moment, the two of them considering Mr. Papadonkus' bungalow across the street. The most noticeable thing about the teacher's home, Truman thought, was that the front lawn was green. Very green, a shade deeper and more verdant than the lawns next door, despite the cool autumn weather. A short white fence- the only fence in this neighborhood- separated Mr. Papadonkus' yard from the lesser lawns on either side. Sasha followed his gaze and then, after a few seconds of thought, asked if Truman was able to speak to grass.

"I can..." Truman answered.

"But you do not like to," Sasha remarked, tipped off to this fact by the reluctance in Truman's voice.

Truman sighed as they started across the street. "Grass is…hard to talk to," he said as they made their way over to Mr. Papadonkus' yard. From this distance, he could tell that it was definitely turf grass, which was just great. "I don't think they can see or hear as well as trees can."

"You're going to attempt communication anyway," Sasha said. It wasn't an order, merely a statement of fact.

"Might as well give it a shot," Truman said as they stopped in front of Mr. Papadonkus' house. "Since we're here and all."

Well-maintained lawns like the one before him always gave Truman the creeps. There was just something so unnatural about them, and this one seemed especially lifeless, despite its brilliant green color. There were no 'pest plants' growing amongst the grass, no dandelions, no ground ivy or buttercups. There weren't any insects here either, as the butterflies had nothing to perch upon, the bees had no flowers to pollinate, and Truman honestly would not have been surprised to find that ants could not settle here either. The only thing that thrived here were the sharp blades of over-fertilized, chemically sustained grass.

Sasha stopped him before he could step onto the lawn. "Do you taste that?" he asked, his lips curled in distaste. Truman had looked at him, confused, until he realized that yes, the taste was back. It wasn't as strong as it had been at the Sealofts, and it was a mere sickly hint of what it had been back at the school, but it was there, even if it was only noticeable if Truman concentrated on it.

"Our U.P.E. might've passed through here," Truman guessed.

Sasha had a different theory. "It's not a strong enough sensation for it to have physically been here," he speculated, looking at Mr. Papadonkus' empty driveway. "But if Papadonkus has been regularly interacting with it, some of its energy might be sticking to him." He switched his gaze from the driveway to the house. "And that is what we're sensing right now."

"That would mean that if he's meeting with our U.P.E., he isn't doing it here," Truman pointed out.

Sasha nodded, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Ask the grass if they've seen him leaving his home at strange times," he said. He spoke as though talking to grass was a completely normal thing to do during a psychic investigation. Even Truman could admit that such a thing sounded insane out loud, and he was the one doing the interviewing.

The best location to speak with the grass would be over by the driveway. Grass weren't like trees. The range of what they could perceive was much shorter, and the grass that grew near the driveway would be the most likely to know of Mr. Papadonkus' comings and goings. He walked along the sidewalk, careful not to step on any stray blades, bracing himself for what he knew would probably be an ordeal.

Standing where he was, in the middle edge of the driveway, Truman could barely pick up on anything. In his mind, he heard them as incoherent whispers, their scraps of talk too low and too rapid for him to understand. He knelt onto the asphalt, putting two fingers to his forehead to focus his herbaphony. The grass' whispering did get louder, but what they were saying was still unintelligible. They were all speaking at once, their murmurs panicked and hushed. Occasionally, he could make the name 'Jonathan' out over the anxious cacophony, but that was about it.

Truman had spoken to a lawn like this many years ago, at a function that his father had dragged him to. Too shy to talk to any of the strangers at the party, Truman had turned to the grass outside for company, and had come away from their conversation feeling incredibly depressed about their pitiful, dependent existence. Hence why he wasn't exactly eager to speak to this lawn now. He knew that he'd undoubtedly wind up feeling sorry for them, regardless of whether or not they had anything useful to tell him. _Hi everybody!_ he greeted, his telepathic voice louder and deeper than the voices of the grass.

The voices ceased all at once. If the grass blades had had eyes, they would have all been staring up at him in wide-eyed fear and uncertainty. As it was, there was only a few seconds of silence, before one tiny voice spoke up. _It's not Jonathan?_

The question had opened a floodgate, and the grass began talking all at once again. This time, Truman could actually make out what they were saying. The phrase 'not Jonathan' was repeated over and over again, the volume rising as the news spread throughout the entirety of the lawn. Hearing all of these voices in his head at once was quite uncomfortable, and Truman winced as he tried to focus his herbaphony on the grass nearest to him. _I'm Truman,_ he thought over the din. _Who's Jonathan?_

He really should not have asked that question. _Jonathan!_ They'd all spoken simultaneously, but their tones varied between terrified and contemptuous.

 _It's the Six-Limbed Slicer of Linden Ave,_ most of them said.

 _Two sets that roll and one that stomps,_ another group added.

 _Crushes us_ said three of them from somewhere on Truman's left.

 _But that's not the worst part._

 _Oh, no. Not the worst._

 _Not the worst!_

 _It's not the worst!_

 _I'm tall! I'm tall! I'm going to be cut because I'm tall!_

 _Are you here to cut us, Truman?_

 _Here to slice us?_

 _Of course not!_ Truman thought as reassuringly as he could. Their panicked voices were becoming overwhelming, and Truman looked away, towards the neighboring house. An old lady was staring at him through her window, her expression baffled. They made eye contact for one second before she hurriedly drew the curtains closed.

Sasha had also seen her. "She's calling the Sheriff," he said, thankfully out loud. There were enough voices in his head as it was.

"Can you blame her?" Truman asked, rubbing his temples. He probably would've done the same thing if he had been in her shoes.

"Should we be concerned?"

"Nah, I'm sure the Sheriff will explain everything to her," Truman said. Although that meant that he would eventually have to tell the Sheriff why he was kneeling in the middle of Mr. Papadonkus' driveway for no discernible reason. That would be a fun conversation to look forward to. "I should probably wrap this up," he said, before focusing his herbaphony on the grass again.

They were still chatting nervously amongst themselves, speculating on whatever horrible fate Truman had in mind for them. _Guys,_ he thought over their prattling. _I'm not here to cut anybody. I just want to ask some questions-_

 _Questions?_ they said, interrupting him.

 _Ask a question? Ask us a question?_

 _Why do you want to ask us questions?_

 _We're just grass._

 _Is this about our water intake?_

They had gone from fearful to paranoid in a split second. _I just want to ask about the man who lives here,_ Truman thought, trying to quell their suspicions.

 _No man lives here._

 _Only grass lives in this lawn._

 _Only grass, only us._

 _No crawlers or fliers, either._

 _Only grass grows in this soil._

This was turning out to be a huge pain in the neck. _I meant the man who lives in the house nearby,_ Truman thought, exasperated. _He walks down this driveway every day?_

Again, they stopped talking, a confused silenced settling over them, until one clever blade (the same one that had broken the first silence?) piped up. _Oh! You mean The Provider!_

 _The Provider!_ They shouted joyously, their exclamations ringing in his head. He grimaced.

 _The Provider gives us nourishment!_ proclaimed one group.

 _Gives us the Good Stuff!_

 _Yeah, the Good Stuff!_

 _Keeps us green, even in the cold season!_

 _Better than water._

 _Why are you asking questions about The Provider?_ that one clever blade asked.

 _Yeah…why do you want to know about Our Provider?_

 _Do…do you want to cut The Provider?_

 _You're going to cut him down?_

 _No!_ Truman said, taken aback by their sudden suspicion of him. He couldn't recall the other lawn he'd spoken to being so prone to mood swings. _I just…uh-_

 _Why else would you be asking about The Provider?_

 _Did the other lawns send you?_

 _They're jealous of us!_

 _Jealous of our Green!_

Oh great, they were really working themselves up over this. He looked up at Sasha, uncertainty in his features. Sasha shrugged back helplessly, unable to aid Truman in this endeavor. But what would Sasha have done in this situation, had their roles been reversed? He would have thought of some slick story to explain his presence, one that would have instantly gotten the grass to cooperate. Truman wasn't good at thinking up lies on the spot, but surely fooling a bunch of grass wasn't outside the realm of his abilities.

 _I don't want to hurt The Provider!_ Truman blurted out. _I…I want to save him!_

 _Save him?_ the grass said in shock.

 _Yeah! He's um…_ Truman scrambled to think of a scenario that would make the grass more amiable to his questions. _Jonathan's kidnapped him!_

 _Jonathan!_ They spat the name hatefully. _That rootless bastard!_

 _He's going to slice The Provider in half!_

 _Is this why The Provider has been gone?_

 _Yes,_ Truman answered. _I'm with the Psychonauts, and my partner and I are trying to save him from…Jonathan._

 _Jonathan!_ they echoed, with just as much hatred as before.

 _Yeah! Jonathan!_ Truman thought, mirroring their attitude. _But, in order to find him and uh, bring him to Justice, I'll need your guy's help._

 _Anything,_ they said.

 _We'll do anything for The Provider!_

 _Ask us your question, Truman._

 _Okay. You guys know The Provider's schedule pretty well, right?_ Truman asked.

 _Oh yes,_ they answered as one. _It's vital that we keep track of The Provider's comings and goings._

 _During the growing seasons and the cold seasons, he leaves us for five days in a row._

 _Leaves us in the morning, comes back before dusk._

 _Then for two days, he remains here, with us._

 _In the hot months, he stays and keeps us Nourished and Hydrated._

 _The Provider is Good,_ they sighed dreamily.

 _So when he leaves, it's normally when the sun is out, right?_ Truman said before they could start gushing again.

 _Yes_.

 _Only when the sun is out._

The majority of the lawn appeared to agree with that assessment, but there was one blade who dissented. _That's not how it has been lately_ ,the blade of grass that Truman had dubbed 'The Smart One' said. _The Provider has been leaving at night, too._

A stunned pause, as though the lawn was realizing that what the Smart One had said was true. _He does leave at night!_

 _He does!_

 _The Provider leaves at night!_

 _Do you know how often?_ Truman asked, directing his question at the Smart One.

 _Every other day or so? I'm not really sure, but it has been often,_ the Smart One replied, their voice louder than the excited mutters of their peers. _He'd leave when the moon was high in the sky and would come back before dawn._

 _And when he does come back,_ Truman said, unsure of how to phrase this next part in a way that the grass would be able to understand, _does he come back… normal? Like does the air around him seem different?_

 _The air around here has been strange lately_ , the Smart One admitted.

 _It's nastier,_ remarked their friend.

 _Not tasty at all!_

 _It's not like the Good Stuff!_

 _It's Jonathan, isn't it?_ the Smart One said. _It's that beast's evil influence._

 _Er, yes,_ Truman lied. _That's exactly what it is._ There was definitely something toxic here in this neighborhood, but it wasn't some kid with a lawnmower. _Thanks for your help, guys. That's all I wanted to know._

 _You'll return The Provider to us, won't you?_ The Smart one said before Truman could sever the telepathic link.

 _You'll return him safely, won't you Truman?_

 _You'll give us Our Provider back?_

 _We'll wilt without Him._

 _Uh…_ Truman glanced around the lawn, feeling guilty for deceiving them. _We will definitely find him, you can count on that._ He rose abruptly, their thanks reverberating in his mind as he quickly returned to Sasha.

"My theory was correct," Sasha said the moment Truman was back on the sidewalk. He wasn't smug, simply matter-of-fact.

Truman pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. There was a light pressure on the right side of his temple, not quite painful, but similar to the sensation that often preceded a migraine. It would likely pass as he put more distance between himself and the lawn. "I think so, yeah. Were you listening?"

"Here and there. Listening to all of them speaking at once was nigh unbearable," Sasha said, giving Truman a quick once over. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Truman said, brushing the dust off of his khaki slacks. Patches of dirt stained his knees.

Sasha raised an eyebrow. "You aren't feeling psychically drained at all?"

"No? Should I be?"

Sasha glanced at the lawn, and then back at Truman. "There must be tens of thousands of blades of grass in this yard. You just had a telepathic connection with at least half of them."

Truman shrugged, not really sure of why that mattered.

"If I tried to read one-thousand minds at once, I would probably have a stroke," Sasha continued.

"It's just grass, man. It's not the same thing."

"You've still expended quite a bit of psychic energy," Sasha said. "I'm merely surprised that your nose isn't spurting blood over the place."

Truman rubbed the back of his neck, awkwardly spouting some half-chuckled remark about having good stamina before starting across the street. Had that been a compliment? Compliments –genuine ones, anyway- were not something he knew how to take well, being better acquainted with criticisms. He changed the subject when Sasha caught up with him. "I think we've got enough circumstantial evidence to get a search warrant," he said, keeping his eyes focused on the Buick. "But it might take a few hours to get one."

"If he's careful enough to meet with the U.P.E. away from his home, chances are he's not leaving evidence around there either," Sasha said as they approached their car. "Why waste the time? We should focus on finding the U.P.E."

That was a good point. But how were they going to find it? Were they just going to continue asking the local foliage if they'd seen any weird bug-things lurking around town lately?

Truman said as much to Sasha once they were back in the car. "Why not?" Sasha replied. "It's worked for us so far."

* * *

The next few hours were spent running around town, talking to the local trees.

Ailanthus' were abundant within Sutton, many of them growing along the roads, between buildings, and in parking lots. These trees dominated the town, due in part to their aggressive spouting and their ability to grow in most soil types. Changying had gotten the word of Truman and Sasha's presence out and there had been little need for him to introduce himself over and over again to the trees around town. They, much like Changying, were friendly and easy to talk to, and one sapling had even been bold enough to initiate contact (which Truman had found endearing, even if the sapling hadn't had anything really worthwhile to say).

The first tree that they had spoken with had had some decent information. This Ailanthus, an older tree named Linhua, reported sensing the strange, poisonous energy throughout the past two months. They also mentioned that that they had, in fact, seen a large butterfly crawling around on top of the roof of the building that they grew in front of.

 _The stench was just awful_ , Linhua had recalled. _It was stronger on that night than it had ever been before, or since._

 _Do you remember what time it was when you saw it?_ Truman had asked.

 _Time?_ Linhua had sounded confused.

Truman had forgotten that plants didn't keep track of the hours the way that humans did. _Uh, never mind. This did happen at night though, right?_

 _Oh yes, most definitely._

 _Do you remember any other strange events happening around you?_

Linhua hadn't even hesitated before giving their answer. _That's about it for me. You should talk to my cousin up the street. Their name's Hualing!_

Hualing did indeed live up the street, but they really hadn't had much to add. They too had sensed the toxic energy, and they even claimed to have felt the U.P.E. flying above their branches one night. None of this testimony was useful, as Truman and Sasha already knew that the creature was hanging around the town, and that it was most active at night. Truman thanked the tree anyway, and Hualing recommended that they speak to yet another Ailanthus who conveniently lived close by.

From there, a pattern emerged. Truman and Sasha would park near an Ailanthus, the Ailanthus would pretty much repeat the things that their cousins had said, and then they would refer Truman to another cousin who grew 'just up the way.' Truman didn't think that these trees were lying about what they had witnessed, but there did seem to be some embellishment of the truth going on. It wasn't being done maliciously- these trees clearly were just caught up in the excitement of talking to actual human being.

Sasha had had enough by the eighth fruitless interview. "This isn't getting us anywhere", he said as they drove up the street, on their way to visit the next cousin. "These- what are they called? Ailanthus'?"

"Yeah," Truman answered.

"These Ailanthus' are all telling us things we already know. We are going to end up running around in circles if we continue to interview them like this."

Truman frowned, knowing that Sasha was right. But what could they do? There were plants other than trees growing in this town, but most of them were shrubs, grasses and flowers. There were too many of them to interview individually, and it was unlikely that they would have anything useful to tell them. Those plants grew low to the ground and were most active during the day, and all of the evidence they had collected pointed to the U.P.E. being nocturnal and mostly airborne. "Maybe I'm not talking to the right trees," Truman said as he slowed down, the Ailanthus that he was supposed to talk to next visible along the side of the road. It was growing dangerously close to a telephone pole, the outer edges of its skinny branches almost touching the wires. "If this U.P.E. was in town right now, we would have sensed it," he continued as he parked the car not far from the tree. "It's probably hiding outside of town, in the woods."

"Sutton is surrounded on all sides by woods," Sasha pointed out. "If we're going to attempt to search the forest, we'd need an exact starting point." The car was parked, but neither man made any move to exit the vehicle, both of them thinking over their next course of action. "These trees are communicating to each other, correct?" Sasha said, after a minute of contemplative silence.

"Yeah, they do it through pheromone signals," Truman replied.

"Is it possible that different species of trees could communicate with each other?"

"I don't know," Truman said, thoughtfully scratching his beard. "I think they can. I don't know how well they would be able to understand each other, but they should at least be able to pick up on it." He looked out the passenger window, his gaze on the tree outside. "It would be like overhearing a conversation in a language that you didn't understand."

"You should ask that tree about what it's heard, instead of what it's seen," Sasha suggested as he opened his door.

Truman had allowed the tree (named Lizzy) to excitedly tell him about the time that a weird butterfly had done a barrel roll right in front of them before asking if they had overheard anything interesting from the other trees.

 _I heard that my cousin Linhua saw that same butterfly on a roof a few weeks ago. Have you talked to them yet?_ Lizzy replied, misunderstanding Truman's question. _You should stop by their plot; they don't live too far from here._

 _No, I meant from the other trees,_ Truman clarified. _Like, from the birches and the maples._

 _Birches? Maples?_ Lizzy sounded shocked that Truman would ask them about other tree species when they had so many great cousins around town to talk to. Their eagerness to help won out over their confusion, however, and they answered the question honestly. _The other trees don't talk much to the likes of us_ , Lizzy said, a hint of disdain laced in their friendly tone, _but the Sugar Maples have been awfully fussy as of late. Well, fussier than they usually are, anyway._

 _What are they fussing about? Are they afraid of something?_ Truman had a hard time imaging something that could cause a strong hardwood like a Sugar Maple to 'fuss'.

 _Oh, I don't know. But they've been sending distress signals back and forth for some time now._ A breeze blew, causing Lizzy's branches to sway, the movements of the limbs almost seeming like an affectation of a shrug. _Between you and me, the Sugar Maples are kind of sensitive. They could be sending those signals over any little ol' thing._

 _Are there any Sugar Maples around here?_

Lizzy hesitated. _Are you going to talk to them? Really, you shouldn't waste your time. My cousin Linhua is much closer, you know._

Truman did know that, because he had already spoken to them. _I just…I just want to check up on them. They're probably not feeling too well, given all the crazy stuff that's been happening lately._

 _They do have a weaker constitution than my kind does, that's for sure,_ Lizzy conceded. _Alright. There's a Maple living in the center of town. I'll tell you where they live so you can make sure they aren't rotting or anything. But afterwards, you should go see my cousin. They've got quite a story to tell, I bet you'll enjoy hearing it!_

 _I'm sure I will,_ Truman thought before Lizzy gave him directions to the Sugar Maple's plot.

* * *

Finding the Sugar Maple would not have been difficult, even without Lizzy's instructions. For one thing, it was huge. At a glance, Truman estimated that the tree stood about eighty feet tall. Their many branches spread upwards and outwards, the longer limbs reaching out ten feet away from their thick, dark trunk. The tree was large, massive compared to the shorter and more slender Ailanthus', but they would have stuck out regardless, due to the brilliance of the their foliage. Their wide leaves, still mostly on the branches, were a deep orange-red, a bright contrast to the less eye-catching yellow-green of the Ailanthus.

The tree's plot was located not far from the western bank of the Elk River. They grew alone, their siblings having long been cut down for one reason or another. As he and Sasha advanced towards the tree, Truman had an inkling that the Sugar Maple he was about to speak to was old, older than many of the buildings in this town, and certainly older than the shorter lived Ailanthus' he'd spoken to previously. The inkling did not make him nervous- the clumsiness he had when dealing with humans was absent during his conversations with plants- but it did let him know that this Sugar Maple needed to be addressed with a certain amount of respect.

That was why, when he had gotten close enough to the tree for it to notice his presence, he didn't immediately attempt to initiate a conversation. He merely reached out psychically, non-verbally letting the Sugar Maple know that the two of them could communicate with each other if they were inclined to do so. He then pulled back a little, allowing the tree to mull it over. Truman did not know what this Sugar Maple's experiences with humans were-at the very least, it had witnessed its friends get chopped down- and he thought it would be best if he allowed the Sugar Maple to speak first.

He felt Sasha's telepathic presence in his mind for a brief second. His partner withdrew upon realizing there was no conversation for him to eavesdrop on, frowning as he looked at the tree, then at Truman, then back at the tree again. "I'm just giving them a moment," Truman said, unsure of how to better explain why he hadn't just walked up and started talking to this tree like he had with the others. Sasha nodded, not questioning Truman's approach, despite his words on the matter not really being all that enlightening. He just stood there, his hands in his jacket pockets; patiently allowing Truman to do what he felt was best in this situation. It was actually pretty surprising, if only because Truman was so used to having to defend the effectiveness of his more passive strategies to those he had worked with in the past.

Finally, after what had probably been two minutes of careful consideration on the Sugar Maple's part, the tree spoke. _You're that fellow whose been running around chattin' up the Stinktrees._

The tree's 'voice' sounded similar to that of an old lady's, the no-nonsense drawl of a grandmother who was wise to every sort of foolishness any youngster could come up with. _Yes, that's me,_ Truman admitted, hoping that the Sugar Maple would not hold his interactions with the Ailanthus' against him.

The Sugar Maple hmphed, annoyed. _You've gone and gotten them all excited, you know that? They've done nothing but chatter, chatter, and chatter about some magical human that can actually talk to us. They've been louder than my sparrows, all in a titter over you._ Truman didn't reply, knowing that interrupting at this point would only further irritate the Sugar Maple. _Well, let me tell you this: I've seen and known a lot of humans, and I don't find you the least bit impressive just because you can understand my words._

Although the Sugar Maple's words weren't exactly kind, Truman found himself smiling. He wasn't offended, as someone being unimpressed with him wasn't exactly new. The tree's manner of speaking was vaguely reminiscent of Ford Cruller's own southern accent and blunt attitude. _I'm sorry that I bothered you,_ he thought _. This town has been having some trouble lately, and my partner and I are just trying to get to the bottom of it._

 _You ain't need to tell me that this town's in trouble,_ the Sugar Maple said sharply. _I already know. Those Stinktrees might think this whole situation is fine entertainment, but me and mine are under attack!_ A pause _. And I suppose your kind is too,_ they added as an afterthought.

 _You're under attack? What do you mean?_

 _Come closer and have a look at my trunk,_ the Sugar Maple said. Truman did so, examining the grooves and ridges of the tree's dark grey-brown bark for signs of damage. _Not there,_ the tree huffed impatiently. _You've got to come up here._

Oh. The tree's trunk was about twenty feet tall, so he'd have to levitate in order to get a look at whatever it was this Sugar Maple wanted him to see. He rose, quickly and competently- Truman was a passable levitator, even if he did not possess the finesse or grace of some of his more confident colleagues. He put one hand on the tree to steady himself and observed the trunk from above.

There was, at the very top of the trunk, right in the middle of where the Sugar Maple's many branches split off, a small, round hole, roughly the size of a half-dollar coin. _You see that hole?_ the Sugar Maple asked. _It don't look too bad from the outside, but it's from when that drat bug sucked the sap right out of me!_

 _It…what?_

Truman pulled himself closer as the Sugar Maple ranted on, highly offended. _I ain't been tapped for a good one-hundred years, and that lousy little insect just perched right on me and stuck its nasty feeding drill right into me! The nerve!_

 _Oh my God!_ He peered down and motioned for Sasha to follow him up. Sasha hesitated, and then rose- somewhat shakily- up to Truman's level. "They're saying that the U.P.E. was feeding off of them," Truman said, pointing at the wound.

Sasha leaned forward, careful not to allow the surrounding branches to poke his jacket. "It's a shallow hole," he observed, "possibly from some sort of proboscis?"

"I guess so," Truman said, examining the trunk and branches for similar wounds as Sasha removed one of his gloves. He found none. "I'm gonna go back down, okay?"

"Fine. I will see if I can pick anything up from this," Sasha reached out, and then paused, his gloveless hand hovering over the hole. "This tree won't be offended if I touch its injury, will it?"

Truman didn't think that the Sugar Maple would care, but asked anyway. _Your pal there can do whatever he wants, if it'll help you nab the thing that did this to me,_ they responded. Truman gave Sasha the go-ahead and descended back down to the ground.

 _When did this happen?_ Truman asked the second he landed. It must have been a while ago, as neither he nor Sasha had tasted that strange, poisonously sweet energy that normal lingered after the creature's presence.

 _The moon was half-full that night,_ the Sugar Maple said. _So I'd say that it was about a month ago._

 _And it hasn't been back?_

 _No. I've felt it around, every once in a while, but it only fed on me once. Do you have good aim?_

 _Good aim?_

 _Yeah. You're gonna shoot it, aren't you?_

 _Um…_ Did the tree mean with a gun or with a psi-blast? Neither of them had any sort of firearm, and Truman's aim with his psi-blasts was just okay. He couldn't speak for Sasha, although word around the agency was that he was pretty good. _I do alright, I guess. But I don't know if we're actually going to shoot this thing._

 _Hmph! What kind of answer is that?_ the Sugar Maple said, annoyed. _I thought you humans loved shooting things!_

 _We'll see what happens._ In all honesty, Truman hoped that it wouldn't come to that, at least not until the U.P.E.'s hold on the students was broken.

 _Oh, you'll see, huh? Well you should know that the butterfly is small and fast, so you better have good aim. Otherwise, you'll end up like those other humans, and my friends in the woods will keep getting attacked!_

Sasha glided down next to him, his trip down appearing easier than his trip up had been. He looked as though he had just drunk something that had disagreed with him. He swallowed, then asked if Truman was finished talking to the Sugar Maple.

"Almost. You alright?"

Sasha waved his concern away. "What I've seen corroborates with what the tree has said. Ach, sap is disgusting." He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, shaking one out into his hand. "Do you mind? I need to get this taste out of my mouth."

"No, go ahead. I'll be done soon."

 _Hey! Is that a cigarette?_ the Sugar Maple yelled. _He better not put that out near me!_

 _He won't,_ Truman reassured. He hoped that Truman wouldn't, anyway. _Uh, you said that the butterfly was small and fast. But the other trees claimed that the butterfly was big_.

 _It's big for a butterfly_ , the Sugar Maple clarified, _but smaller than you and that other guy._

 _Can you give me a size estimate?_

 _Hmm, I've got a little girl who likes to climb on me. Quicker than a squirrel she is. Felt like they were about the same weight, but I can't be too sure. It has been a month._

So he and Sasha were dealing with a butterfly-like creature that was roughly the size of a small child. The U.P.E. didn't sound that threatening when described in that manner, but it must've had some kind of power if it had hypnotized twenty-seven people. The Sugar Maple probably wouldn't know what that power was, as it was unlikely that it would have used it on a tree. _Do you have any idea where this thing might be right now?_

 _It's in the forests northwest of here. Most of my friends who live there have been fed on,_ they said _. That's where the bug lives when it isn't stinking up my town._

That made sense. It was obvious that it wasn't in town now, and though the tree's directions weren't precise, they were good enough to give them a starting point. It was better than having to search through all of Braxton County, in any case. _Have you heard anything else from your friends?_

 _I have actually,_ the Sugar Maple said, sounding more worried than it had before. _I don't have all of the details but…apparently the bug was attacked while feeding on one of the other Sugar Maples._

 _Attacked? By what?_

 _Nobody knows. But fire was involved._

* * *

"Eyespots," Sasha said suddenly as they once again found themselves driving down Sutton Ln.

"Eyespots?" Truman repeated. He wasn't exactly sure of where they were going, only that they were currently headed north and that they needed to, at some point, go west, if they wanted to reach the section of the forest that the Sugar Maple had claimed the U.P.E. was currently hiding out in. Sasha had the map unfolded onto his lap, his finger tracing the red line that represented the road they were driving on.

His finger paused. "Turn left onto Exchange Rd," he said. "It should be right up ahead." He was correct, and as Truman turned onto the lone, back-country road, he noticed that Sasha's finger had begun following a thinner black line that had split off from the red line.

Tall trees lined both sides of the road, each of them morphing into an orange-brown blur as they passed them by. The road itself stretched out before them, curving slightly against the forest. Truman didn't bother asking where next to turn or if he should prepare to stop. Sasha seemed to have a location in mind, and would no doubt let Truman know what to do when the time came. Instead they drove in silence for about a minute, before Truman said "Eyespots."

Sasha nodded. "Yes. Eyespots."

"What about eyespots?

"Butterflies have them," Sasha answered thoughtfully.

Truman was no entomologist, but he was indeed aware that many butterfly species did, in fact, have eyespots on their wings. Perhaps the U.P.E. had them on its wings? If so, than why did it matter? Truman figured that he and Sasha would be able to identify their U.P.E. regardless of the creature's wing pattern, because it was a butterfly the size of a child.

"Do you remember that pattern we saw at the school?" Sasha asked upon realizing that Truman would be puzzling over his statement until he elaborated further.

Truman had only caught a brief glimpse of it himself, but he remembered Sasha's more vivid description.

"I'm thinking," Sasha continued, "that the pattern that we saw is similar to that of the eyespots on a butterfly's wings. Or a moth's, I suppose."

"Oh," Truman said, finally catching on.

"If that is the case, than it's reasonable to assume that the U.P.E. is using its wings as a hypnotic catalyst." He peered down at his map. "The road will curve soon. You need to pull over before that."

The tune of his cell-phone's ringtone interrupted Truman before he could inquire about Sasha's plan. Huffing in annoyance, he fished around his jacket pocket for his phone, one hand still on the wheel. Keeping his eyes on the road, he answered the phone without checking the caller id, hoping that it wasn't his mother- he loved her, of course, and he wouldn't have ignored her call, but he was already seen as a mama's boy around headquarters, and he knew that taking a call from her while in the middle of a mission would only further cement that reputation.

Luckily for him, the caller was actually Sheriff Walls, who was not happy at all with him. "Just what in the Sam Hill do you two think you're doing?" he asked sharply, cutting off Truman's 'hello'.

"Uh…" The Sheriff's ire had caught him off guard, and his mind drew a blank.

"You should pull over now," Sasha suggested.

"I said, what in the hell are you fellas doing?" the Sheriff demanded to know as Truman came to a stop along the side of the road.

"Is that the Sheriff?" Sasha asked.

"Answer the question!" the Sheriff shouted.

"I'm…uh," Truman glanced uneasily at Sasha. "I just pulled over…"

"Pulled over? Pulled over where?"

"That's the Sheriff, isn't it?" Sasha asked again. "What does he want?"

"He wants to know what the hell we're doing," Truman answered.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sheriff Walls yelled, upset by Truman's lack of answers.

"What does he think we're doing?" Sasha asked, irritated.

"Are you trying to run up the clock?" the Sheriff accused, unwittingly providing an answer to Sasha's question. "You wastin' time so that you can make an extra dollar?"

"No! That's not it at all!" Truman denied vehemently. "We aren't paid by the hour!"

"Do you think this is a joke? Are you not takin' this situation seriously?" Frustration had exaggerated the Sheriff's West Virginian accent. "Do you think you can get away with it just cuz we're a small town?"

"Just hang up on him," Sasha said, frowning.

Truman would have loved to. Unfortunately, he had been raised to be polite, and for that reason, could not just hang up on somebody without at least saying goodbye, even when that somebody was unfairly accusing him of trying to cheat his employers.

"Sheriff Walls," Truman said, cutting into the man's tirade. "We are taking this situation seriously. We're actually following a lead right now-"

"Following a lead!" the Sheriff bellowed incredulously. "What lead could you possibly have?"

"W-we-" Truman stammered.

"You haven't spoken to any of the witnesses that you said you going to speak to!" the Sheriff ranted on. "I got a call from Mrs. Robert Hutchins saying that you two were loitering around her neighbor's yard? Why? What the hell were you doing?"

Oh God. Here it was. The part where Truman had to explain himself. "Her neighbor is Anton Papadonkus," he began. "We have reason to believe that he has something-

"Mrs. Robert Hutchins said that you were sitting in his driveway, staring at the grass!"

"I was talking to his lawn!" Truman blurted out.

A pause. Truman could imagine what Sheriff Walls must look like now. His expression was likely one of confusion, his brows drawn together, and his eyes squinting, probably staring at the phone. "His-what? What did you say? I must've misheard you."

"I was talking to the grass," Truman repeated feebly. "I can…I can talk to plants."

Silence on the other end. Truman shifted, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel anxiously. "I…that is, Agent Nein and I, have been interviewing your trees. That's how we got our lead."

No response. Sasha unbuckled his seatbelt and reached out, his gloved palm facing upward. "Give me the phone," he said.

Truman glanced at him, but didn't hand the phone over, wanting to see if he could restore the Sheriff's trust in them by being honest. "Their testimony and the evidence that we've gathered suggests that a large, insect-like U.P.E. is attacking the class of 2000 with some sort of hypnotic agent."

"Let me speak with the Sheriff," Sasha requested.

"We believe that this creature is attacking the students on behalf of somebody, and a lot of the circumstantial evidence points that person being Anton Papadonkus."

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Sheriff Walls asked furiously.

Truman sighed. "No, I don't think that you're an idiot."

"You expect me to believe that a goddamn bug is what's terrorizing my town? And that you found that out because the goddamn trees told you so?"

Sasha nudged him, and Truman, his patience nearly at its limits, pushed his hand away unthinkingly. "Sheriff Walls, please calm down," he said. "I understand that this sounds strange-"

"Strange? Strange?" the Sheriff roared into the phone. "It sounds like something a complete madman would say!"

Truman was really sick and tired of people interrupting him all of the time. "I know that it sounds crazy," he gritted out, "but it's the sort of crazy that my partner and I have been trained to handle."

"Your boss told me that the Psychonauts were sending their best," Walls complained. "Instead they give me a German and a tree hugger."

That insult, one that had been lobbed at him before, pressed a switch in his brain that was not often touched. He felt his anger bubble up inside of him, but instead of swallowing it meekly like he normally did, he let it out. "What the fuck, man," he snapped, clutching the phone so hard that it's black plastic was on the verge of cracking. "I wasn't hugging those trees!"

A telekinetic tug wrenched the phone from his grip, the Sheriff's offended response becoming less intelligible the further it got from his ear. Truman let it go into Sasha's hand, having had enough of dealing with someone who had no interest in listening to what he had to say. He didn't regret his outburst, though perhaps he would later after he had some time to cool down. As it was, he was seething, furious with the Sheriff for being so willing to disregard all of the work that he and Sasha had been doing just because he didn't understand it.

"I do not appreciate the way that you've been speaking to my partner," Sasha said the moment he had the phone up to his ear. The statement surprised Truman- he hadn't expected Sasha to apologize for his behavior, but he also hadn't thought that Sasha would come to his defense right off the bat like that either.

The Sheriff said something, sounding pissed, though Truman couldn't understand what from where he was sitting. He could have listened in, if had wanted to, by using clairvoyance, but at this point he had no desire to hear anything else.

"I'm well aware that he cussed at you," Sasha said as Truman slumped in his seat. "But you have not been showing him the proper respect an agent of his standing deserves."

Truman looked away, watching as a red pick-up truck passed them by, his anger already starting to ebb. "Agent Zanotto's herbaphonic powers have been a crucial part of our investigation," Sasha continued, "and we would not have this lead without them."

Truman personally thought that Sasha, being as clever as he was, probably would have managed fine had he been assigned to this mission alone. But for once in his life, he allowed himself to take pride in the ability that was so often pushed aside as impractical and useless back at headquarters.

"We've gotten further in mere hours than any of the preceding organizations have in the days that they were here," Sasha said. "And it's all due to Agent Zanotto's tireless efforts." He paused and met Truman's eyes for a split second. Truman looked away first, blushing as he stared down at his shoes.

"Efforts that may one day kill him."

Wait, what? Truman's head snapped up, his eyes widening. "Sasha," he said, "what are you talking about?"

Sasha replied to him by holding up a finger, and Truman shut his mouth. "Herbaphony is a very complex skill that produces a great strain on the brain. The exact processes involved are too complicated to elaborate on at this moment, but you should be aware that the next blade of grass that he speaks with could be his last."

He said that last sentence with such exaggerated graveness that it was comical, and Truman struggled to keep himself laughing aloud. Sasha peered at him, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "Agent Zanotto perseveres despite death lurking underneath every tree. Because he loves Small Town America that much."

How could Sasha spout such blatant and ridiculous lies with a straight face? Truman was only listening and he had to muffle his laughter into his sleeve. It appeared, however, that Sheriff Walls had bought it hook, line, and sinker. "No, you cannot speak to him. He has a terrible headache. Yes, you should feel bad. You can make it up to us by putting an A.P.B. out for Anton Papadonkus' vehicle, and by not bothering us again unless you have more information, or there is an emergency." And with that, Sasha hung up and tossed the phone back to Truman.

Truman fumbled with the phone as he caught it, laughing, once again amazed by how effortlessly Sasha was able to come up with such convincing nonsense on the spot. "I can't believe," he said snickering as he put the phone back into his pocket, "that you said all that. And the Sheriff just…bought it. Holy shit."

"It's not funny, Truman. You could die at any minute," Sasha said grimly. Then he chuckled, his laughter deep and sophisticated.

"How do you do it?" Truman asked. "You make it look so easy."

"It is easy," Sasha said, flicking a stray bang off of his forehead. "No offense, but you Americans will believe anything if it's delivered in a serious enough manner."

"Is this sort of thing harder in Germany?"

"In a way," Sasha replied, opening the passenger door. "We can talk about it later."

* * *

The Sugar Maple had been right. The U.P.E. had made its home here, in the forests northwest of Sutton. They could taste it- the creature's energy was everywhere, tainting every tree, just as foul-tasting as it had been back at the school. Truman wished that they had brought some water along. He also wished that he was wearing different shoes, the ones he had on were not optimal at all for a trek through the woods.

Still, despite the discomfort in his feet and the bad taste in his mouth, he could honestly say that walking through this forest was pretty pleasant. Surrounded on all sides by slender birches, broad-leafed mountain maples, fragrant green pines and vivid sugar maples, Truman could easily see himself enjoying a walk through here, had the circumstances been different. In better times, the atmosphere would have likely been one of peaceful contemplation, a quiet, slow ambiance. As it was, however, there was an aura of fear and concern, reasonable considering that the sugar maples (and only the sugar maples- it seemed that the U.P.E. had a preference) had been under constant threat for the past two months. Even in their worry, though, these trees were patient. They were more than happy to provide answers to Truman's questions, and hopeful that he and Sasha could get rid of the monster that had been leeching off of them. But if it turned out that they couldn't, the trees would have been able to accept that too. They knew from experience that, as troublesome as times were at this moment, it would eventually pass, and they would still be here, standing as they had been for centuries.

He had informed them that Darlene (the lone Sugar Maple back in Sutton) had sent him to inquire about an attack involving fire. They knew instantly what he was speaking of, and they directed him to head up north. _It's not far from here,_ they had all insisted. _You'll smell it, probably. Humans are good at smelling, aren't they?_

About ten minutes into their walk, a frantic shrub flagged them down. Its issue was spotted immediately. A plastic tube about a foot-long was tangled within its leaves. Truman plucked the otter-pop wrapper off of the shrub and handed it off to Sasha. _Thanks!_ the little shrub said with relief. _That thing blew into me days ago, and I just couldn't get it out!_

 _Did you happen to see who dropped it?_ Truman asked. Had one of the zombie teens discarded it here? But what would they be doing out in the woods? They all had a pretty set schedule that didn't leave room for aimless wandering, and besides, otter-pops hadn't been readily available in Sutton for quite some time.

The shrub hadn't spotted the litterer, but Sasha was able to discover the culprit using psychometry. "It was the U.P.E," he said, handing the trash back to Truman.

"The U.P.E.?" Truman crumpled the wrapper and stuffed it into his pocket.

Sasha nodded. "It was drinking the liquid inside."

"It was drinking an otter-pop?" Truman had never heard of a butterfly, or any insect for that matter, eating a popsicle. "Is that why the first victims were so obsessed with them?"

"Possibly," Sasha said, tapping his chin. "It may also be this creature's actual motivation for hypnotizing the students. It may be doing so in exchange for these popsicles."

"Papadonkus maybe the one arranging these trades," Truman concluded, glancing around the forest. "There are probably more of them around. We should keep an eye out for them."

"Perhaps I will be able to trace back to when the initial trade occur, if we get lucky," Sasha agreed.

"Er, yeah." Truman hadn't actually been thinking of that at all. He had only wanted to clean up the mess, as these plants were having a rough enough time without a literal litterbug flying around and dropping its garbage everywhere.

It began drizzling a short time later, the light rain a soft mummer on the multi-colored leaves above. The dense forest canopy protected them from the worst of it, and Truman was content to pull up the hood of his jacket as he continued walking, stopping here and there to pick up otter-pop wrappers when he found them. Sasha was not faring nearly as well as he was. His jacket had no hood, its designer valuing style over substance, and he was rolling through the forest on his levitation ball, in order to avoid getting his shoes dirty. Sasha kept his balance easily as the green sphere rolled over leaves and twigs. Truman thought that using the levitation ball in that manner was a bit excessive, but he had no intention of commenting on it, as it was really none of his business.

"You think I'm being excessive," Sasha said.

"I wasn't going to say anything, but yeah, a little bit," Truman replied honestly. "Watch out for roots."

They continued their trek northward, guided by the occasional plant, and the scent of wet ash being carried by the breeze. As they walked, they felt a light touch of psychic energy, a touch that was nearly overwhelmed the U.P.E.'s heavier presence.

"Feels like the energy we sensed in Randy's store," Truman observed.

"Not surprising," Sasha said as he rolled forward. "Eddie Bodkin's home isn't far from here."

That must have been why Sasha had been so certain of where to look first. "Do you think he's okay?"

"We'll find out soon enough."

The two of progressed onward, the traces of Eddie's supposed energy getting stronger. And then, about an hour after their hike had begun, they found what they were looking for.

The sugar maple's leaves and branches on its south-facing side were completely burnt away, leaving bare, short stubs in place of long, leafy limbs. Half of their trunk was blackened, and had there not been a recent rain, it would probably still be smoldering. Muddy ash and charred sticks lay upon the damp ground surrounding the tree. Truman tapped one of the sooty branches with his foot and part of it disintegrated.

If a hunter or hiker had stumbled upon this scene, they would have assumed that the tree had been stuck by lightning. Truman and Sasha knew better. The two energies that they had been sensing clashed here, and there was no doubt that the U.P.E. and the unknown psychic (who was more than likely Eddie Bodkin) had fought, though there was no way to know at first glance who the victor had been, or which one of them had started the fire.

A can of spray paint lying abandoned near the tree provided a clue. Sasha, recalling his levitation ball, floated the can into his waiting hand. "If Eddie Bodkin has pyrokinetic abilities," he said, examining the can of black paint, "they must be weak, if he needed to use this."

Truman nodded absently, distracted. The burnt Sugar Maple was reaching out, sending out distress signals. Trees could not feel pain the way that humans could, they lacked the nervous system necessary to do so. They were, however, aware of when they had suffered damage, and given that this tree had suffered a good deal of it sometime in the last day or so, it would be logical to guess that that they were giving these signals off as a warning to the trees around them.

Wordlessly, Truman approached the tree, leaving Sasha to investigate the can. Sticky, wet ash clung to his shoes and stained the hem of his pants. He stopped in front of the Sugar Maple, concern etched into his features. The Sugar Maple spoke first. _I know that I'm gorgeous,_ they said lightheartedly, _but it's rude to stare._

Their tone belied their chastising words. _Sorry,_ he thought, smiling _. I just couldn't help myself._

 _Ha. If you think that this part of me looks good, you should check out my north side._

There was a subtle request in that statement, so Truman walked a few steps to the left. From this angle, none of the fire damage could be seen, their leaves varying in color from burnt orange to deep red, darkened by the rain. _Consider me blown away._

 _Ha. Well, that's enough flirting, I think. My name's Stella, and I'm haven't had the best day, if you couldn't tell._

 _I'm Truman. And yeah, I've heard about…your condition._

If Stella had had a nose, they would have snorted. ' _My condition?' You're a polite one aren't you? Let's be frank here, my condition is that I've been both drained and burnt up, and you and your friend there are here to find the thing that did this to me._

 _That about sums it up._

 _I won't waste your time then. Here's what happened. That freak butterfly that's been eating up my friends finally found that it could no longer resist my charms, and decided that I should be its next meal. And so, it did its thing- you do know what its thing is, right?_

 _I've got an idea._

 _Then I won't go into detail. It was unpleasant, of course, but it wasn't anything I wouldn't bounce back from. So I just waited for it to finish up and move on- did I mention that its stench was terrible? I've been infested by stinkbugs more fragrant. Anyway, this person came up. Kinda felt similar to you, but not as strong._

Similar to Truman? They must've been talking about Eddie.

 _Next thing I know, everything's all hot and half of my branches are on fire. The bug shrieked and flew off of me, or maybe it fell?_

 _You aren't sure?_

 _At the time, I was more concerned with fire that was rapidly consuming my limbs and heading towards my trunk._

 _Oh, right,_ Truman thought sheepishly _. Sorry._

 _I don't know what ended up happening to them. I assume their gone now, because otherwise you wouldn't be standing here talking to me. So that's my story. Does any of it help?_

It certainly did. Stella had just confirmed that not only was Eddie Bodkin involved, he probably wasn't being blackmailed by Papadonkus, if he was out here trying to kill the U.P.E. They had also let Truman know just how vital it was that he and Sasha locate him quickly. There wasn't any blood, and the signs of violence were limited to what the fire had left behind, so the fight had clearly ended elsewhere. Eddie may have been the winner, or he may be a hypnotized zombie wandering aimlessly around the forest, while the U.P.E was off licking its wounds. And there was still Papadonkus to deal with…

 _You've been really helpful,_ Truman thought, grateful. He drew a deep breath, a muddy, smoky scent filling his nostrils. _Is there anything I can do for you?_

 _No,_ Stella replied bluntly _. But don't you worry about me. It won't take more than decade for me to be back to my beautiful self. Now go, you got a bug to catch._

Truman said his goodbyes then, wishing Stella a speedy recovery. He turned to find Sasha half-kneeling in the mud, one ungloved hand touching the ground. He looked up, his mouth set in a thin, grim line. "The U.P.E. is with Eddie," he said as he stood up.


	6. Chapter 6

Sasha had, through the use of psychometry, witnessed most of the fight between Eddie and the U.P.E., although calling it a fight may have been an exaggeration. The U.P.E. had gone down in one hit.

"I believe that he snuck up on it," Sasha said as he and Truman followed the now intertwined energies. "The U.P.E. was too busy feeding to notice Eddie walk up, and I suspect that Eddie may have been invisible."

"And then he used pyrokinesis with the spray paint?" Truman asked, stepping over a patch of mushrooms.

"Actually, he had a lighter," Sasha said as he rolled on, again on his levitation ball.

"A lighter?"

"Yes. It appears that the only psychic skill that Eddie can use right now is his invisibility. The last thing I saw through Eddie's eyes was a column of fire that engulfed the tree, and the U.P.E.'s body on the ground." Sasha ducked under a low branch before continuing. "I was able to pick up some brief memories from where the U.P.E. had landed. It was on its back, looking up at who I assume to be Eddie, though it's compound vision made it difficult for me to make out the person's features."

"Was it injured?" Truman asked.

Sasha stopped, pausing to think. "I am not certain. I did not see any burn wounds, nor did I pick up any sort pain or panic. But…" He frowned, tapping his chin. "I felt this utter exhaustion. In that memory, the U.P.E. could barely move its head. It was just so tired, like all of its remaining energy had been expended dodging the fire." He rolled backward a bit, nearly losing his balance while distracted by his thoughts. "There's no way that it would've made it out of this forest on its own," he concluded as he righted himself on his levitation ball.

It hadn't. The foliage that had witnessed the event had reported that Eddie had picked the U.P.E. up and rushed off with it. Why, nobody Truman had spoken to knew, and Sasha didn't have an explanation for it either. "Maybe maintaining a hold on all of its victims is finally catching up to it," he guessed.

"That is what I am thinking as well," Sasha agreed, resuming his roll through the forest. "I have to wonder what would happen to those teens if the U.P.E. suddenly died."

Truman's stomach clenched at the grim implications that sort of pondering brought. There was a chance that the teens would be released from the U.P.E.'s hold with no harm done, in the event of its death. But there was also a chance that they'd be stuck as zombie's permanently. Even worse was the possibility that they may die along with it. They only had a vague idea of how its hypnotic powers work, and everything they knew about that had come from secondhand accounts from plants and the memories lingering around the town and forest. Truman just hoped that they could find it before Eddie could finish what he started. "Let's just concentrate on tracking them down," Truman said, changing the subject. "It's gonna get dark soon."

The sun was setting at this point, casting a hazy gloom upon the forest. It would be night soon, near pitch-black within an hour. Navigating through the forest at night wouldn't be impossible, as what they were following couldn't be seen anyway, but it would make spotting unknown threats a lot more difficult.

"We're getting close," Sasha said. "The energies are getting stronger."

They followed the mingling energies for about fifteen more minutes. Eddie had travelled in a northeast direction with the U.P.E., a direction that would eventually lead back to the road. Eventually, a small orange light could be seen through the trees. "Eddie lives around here, right?" Truman said as he tried to make out the details of the building that the light was attached to. "That might be his house."

"Eddie must have taken the U.P.E. back to his home," Sasha said. "But why? It was in a weakened state. He could have easily killed it then, though I am glad that he didn't."

Eddie certainly seemed to have been in a hurry. If there hadn't been any energy for Truman and Sasha to follow, they may have still been able to track him down by the broken twigs, crushed leaves, and footprints that he had left behind. Had he not had it in him to kill another living thing? He had to have known that the U.P.E. was in some way responsible for the town's predicament, and he was surely able to taste the same energy that Truman and Sasha could. Maybe he had gone to his parents for help. They hadn't called the Sheriff, or notified any authorities, so it was likely that they hadn't come to any decisions about what to do about the U.P.E.

They walked onwards, the house that the light was attached to becoming more visible. It was a gray double-wide trailer with a small patio built onto the back, surrounded on three sides by the woods. Eddie's house most likely. A sudden thought came to Truman as he saw it, an idea of what Eddie's motivation may have been. "I broke a guy's leg once," he said.

Sasha stopped, recalling his levitation ball and regarding Truman with a raised eyebrow. Truman felt him probe his mind, searching for the specific memory that he was speaking of. Truman let him, and after a moment of telepathic digging, Sasha said "You broke his leg on accident."

Truman nodded. The guy had been a part of a ring of bank robbers who used confusion-based tactics to execute their heists. He had attempted to flee from Truman during the raid of their base, and at some point, Truman had grabbed him by the leg with his telekinetic grasp. The guy had then tried to pry Truman off of him with his own telekinetic hand, which had caused Truman to reflexively tighten his grip, which had only made the guy more frantic in his struggle to free himself and then- snap! Or had it been more of a crunch? Truman couldn't remember the exact sound the guy's femur had made when it had shattered, but he vividly recalled the way his eyes had bulged out, the way his mouth had dropped open in a silent 'O' of excruciating pain, and how he had just crumpled to the ground when Truman had released him, shocked.

"I'm not really much of an empath, but I felt pretty bad about the whole thing," Truman said. "I know he was a criminal and all but…I don't know, I didn't mean to do it. Maybe that's why Eddie didn't kill the U.P.E., and why he took it back to his house."

"You may be right," Sasha said. A pause. "What happened to the guy?"

Truman didn't know. "He went to prison, I think. Or maybe he got off scot-free because of a legal technicality. The last time I talked to him was when I apologized for breaking his leg." The guy had been very understanding and had accepted Truman's apology politely, which had made Truman feel worse about the whole thing.

"Hmm. I cannot say that I understand why you feel so guilty about it, but perhaps he will emerge one day and sue you for breaking his leg, and then you will not feel so bad about it anymore."

"Maybe," Truman said hopefully as they continued towards the house.

They were on the patio a few minutes later. If there had been any doubt as to whether or not the U.P.E was here, it was gone now. The taste was so strong now that Truman could practically feel the sludge in his mouth. There were two windows facing the backyard, but the blinds were down on both of them, blocking the view of the inside. A small shed stood in the backyard, but a quick examination of it had revealed nothing of interest. From within, he could hear movement, but no voices. Could Eddie sense them out here? Maybe, but it was more likely that Eddie was too overwhelmed by the U.P.E.'s energy to notice the two of them standing at the backdoor.

He raised his fist to knock on the door, and then paused, uncertain. _Maybe we should go around to the front_ , he thought.

 _Why? What difference would it make?_ Sasha asked.

 _Wouldn't you be suspicious of two strangers claiming to be government agents knocking on your backdoor? Especially when the only way they could've come up is from the forest. And protocol states that we're_ _supposed to knock on the front door…_ He scratched his beard as he thought too hard about something that didn't really matter all that much in the long run. Sasha stared at him blankly, keeping his thoughts on the matter to himself. _Then again, if they thought they could trust the authorities with this, Eddie's parents would've called the Sheriff by now. If they don't trust Sheriff Walls, then they aren't going to trust us no matter what door we knock on, so I might as well knock on this one._

 _Perhaps we should eschew both doors and break in through one of the windows,_ Sasha thought flatly.

 _That's- no, that's not…I'm stalling._

 _I know._

 _I'm just worried Eddie and the U.P.E., I guess._

 _I know that too._

 _What if it dies before we can figure out how to save those teens? And what happens-_ He cut his own thoughts off, realizing that he was letting his anxiety get the better of him again. _Sorry,_ he thought quickly as he straightened his shoulders and knocked on the door.

All movement within the house ceased at the sound. After a few seconds, a woman spoke, though the only thing that Truman could make out was the name 'Chuck.' The curtains on the window to the left fluttered open briefly, but were closed before he could get a good look at who had opened them. A few more seconds passed, and then a minute, and just when Truman was beginning to think that they would have to break in through the window after all, the door opened, just a crack.

The man peaking out was tall and middle-aged, the graying brown hair on his head the same color as his mustache. There were dark circles under his eyes. "Can I help you gentleman?" he asked gruffly.

 _He's suspicious of us. And very worried about his son,_ Sasha thought.

Truman hadn't needed Sasha to tell him that. "Hello," he greeted politely, "is this the Bodkin residence?"

"Who's asking?" the man (Chuck?) said, giving them both a quick once-over.

"We're with the Psychonauts," Truman answered, reaching into his pocket for his badge. "I'm Agent Zanotto and this is my partner…oh." The words died as he pulled his badge out, along with about half of the Otterpop wrappers that he had collected from the forest. They fell from his pocket onto the patio, scattering around his dirt-covered shoes. "I-I'll pick those up," he stammered as Chuck looked down at the trash and then back up at Truman's badge. So much for appearing professional.

"I'm Agent Nein," Sasha said before an awkward silence could fall between the three of them. "We've been investigating the strange affliction that has affected twenty-seven students from this town and the surrounding area."

Truman telekinetically gathered the Otterpop wrappers up while Mr. Bodkin's focus was on Sasha. "Shame about those kids," Mr. Bodkin said as Truman stuffed the wrappers back into this pocket. "Glad my son ain't in town at this moment."

The lie was stated so clumsily that even Truman would've known it was a lie if they hadn't already confirmed that Eddie was still in Sutton. Chuck Bodkin was clearly not a man who often deceived others, but calling him out on the falsehood at this moment would get the door slammed on them in an instant. "It's good that you're son isn't…here, at your house." Mr. Bodkin's grip tightened on the doorknob, but he didn't look away. "Because we have do have a suspect, and there's a good chance that it's somewhere around here. Probably very close by."

"Thanks for the warning, officer," Mr. Bodkin said quickly. "Me and the wife'll stay indoors until this whole mess blows over. Good luck with your search."

"We're not officers!" Truman said, reaching out and grabbing the door before Mr. Bodkin could close it.

Mr. Bodkin glared at Truman's hand. "But you are law enforcement."

"Well, yeah. But we're not the police," Truman explained. "We're Psychonauts. We're here because the cause of this town's problem is paranormal."

Mr. Bodkin visibly bristled at the word paranormal. "I don't know nothin' about anything paranormal, and neither does my wife or son." His face turned red as he realized his slip. "…Who ain't in town," he said, trying to recover from his mistake. "But he wouldn't know nothing even if he were here. He's a good boy. He stays out of trouble."

"You misunderstand Agent Zanotto," Sasha said. "The culprit that we are searching for is not a human."

"Not a human?" Mr. Bodkin repeated warily.

"It's some sort of giant bug that resembles a butterfly," Truman explained. He loosened his grip on the door but didn't let go. "It's using hypnosis to trap its victims in a zombie-like state. We have reason to suspect that it's injured, but we're still following its trail."

"You would not have happened to have seen something fitting that description around here, would you?" Sasha inquired in a tone that implied that he knew that Mr. Bodkin had.

Mr. Bodkin seemed to be conflicted as he stood in the doorway. He opened the door a little more, and his mouth was hanging open slightly, as though he had something he wanted to say, but was uncertain if it was a good idea to say it. There was no doubt that he wanted the burden of the U.P.E. hidden within his home taken off of his shoulders. At the same time, however, he was deeply worried for his son, and he didn't quite trust either one of them yet.

 _Are you able to contact Eddie from here?_ Truman asked Sasha telepathically.

 _I have already been attempting to do so, but he's not responding,_ Sasha replied, sounding a little put out at being ignored.

From inside, a woman's voice suddenly rang out. "Chuck! Who's at the door?" she yelled, fondly exasperated. "You're letting all the cold air in!" She came into view a second later, a short, chubby woman of age with her husband, her shoulder-length hair a shade lighter than Mr. Bodkin's. She stood on her tip toes to look over Mr. Bodkin's shoulders at their guests. "Oh goodness! How long has my husband kept you boys standing out here like that? Come in, Come in!" She pushed Mr. Bodkin to the side and opened the door all the way, motioning for them to enter.

Mrs. Bodkin led them into the kitchen. Her spouse, clearly confused by how welcoming his wife was being, closed the door and trailed after them. The interior of the house was more spacious than the exterior had implied; this being due to the fact that the living room, kitchen, and dining room occupied one open space. The kitchen's décor could only be described as cheery, with red and white checkered curtains on the windows (which naturally matched all of the dishcloths and kitchen towels) and a chicken-shaped clock on the wall. Family photos adorned the fridge, held in place by colorful magnets.

Mrs. Bodkin gestured for them to sit at the round wooden table in the center of the kitchen. "Can I get you anything? Something to drink?"

Truman politely declined, as they didn't really have the time to sit and have a glass of water, as nice as that would've been with the strong taste in his mouth. There was a strange sensation touching his mind- a weariness that was not physical, and probably not his own.

"Edie," Mr. Bodkin said, "these fellows say that they're from the Psychonauts."

"The Psychonauts?" Her smile didn't falter at all. "You must be here because of those poor kids."

"Yes, Ma'am," Truman said. Eddie and the U.P.E. were just down the hall; he could feel it. It was difficult just standing there with the U.P.E. so close, but he didn't want to alarm the Bodkins by just heading off suddenly. _Any luck talking to Eddie?_ he thought.

 _No. He's continuing to ignore me. He's also very anxious._

 _About us?_

 _I am not certain, but I suspect that he's concerned about the U.P.E.'s welfare._

That didn't sound good at all. "Mrs. Bodkin, we just told your husband that we've tracked down the suspect to the area around your home."

The information didn't disturb Mrs. Bodkin in the least. "Is your suspect a big butterfly thing? Because we have a big butterfly thing in our son's room."

"Edie!" Mr Bodkin exclaimed, shocked and startled.

"That's…exactly what we're looking for," Truman said, just as surprised that Mrs. Bodkin would offer this information up so freely when Mr. Bodkin had been so reluctant to even talk to them. "It's in your son's room?"

"Yep. Our boy Eddie's away, and we didn't want that thing out in the living room where it could roam around, so we put some tarp down on the floor and stuck it in his bedroom." From the casual way that she spoke, she may as well have been talking about a stray dog that she had found.

"Your husband did not mention this," Sasha said.

"Oh, he probably forgot," Mrs. Bodkin said flippantly. "Man'd forget his head if it weren't attached to his neck. Don't glare at me like that, Chuck, you know it's true." She bustled past them, heading towards the hall just off the living room. "It's right down this way."

Mr. Bodkin grabbed her arm as she passed him. "Edie," he said, at a loss for words. "Are you sure-"

"What's there to be sure about? These guys are here to help." She put her hand over his, giving it a squeeze. "It's fine." She looked up at him, a plea for him to just go along with it in her eyes. Had she been less subtle, she probably would have winked. Mr. Bodkin sighed and let go of her arm, moving to the side to allow Truman and Sasha to get ahead of him.

"It's right down the hall, last door on the left. I'm sorry, what did you say your names were? Agent Zanotto and Agent…Nein?" Mrs. Bodkin's chattering became quicker the closer she got to her son's bedroom. "I best warn you, this thing stinks to high heaven."

"It does?" Truman said. _That's weird,_ he thought to Sasha. _I don't smell anything. Do you?_

 _No, but I think that Mrs. Bodkin may be experiencing that thing's energy as a scent rather than a taste._ He shrugged. _Some non-psychics are more sensitive to psychic energy than others. I'd bet that Mr. Bodkin cannot smell a thing._

"Got a stench as strong as acccafortis," she said as she put one hand on the door knob and the other over her nose. "It'll hit you once I open this door."

"Thanks for the heads-up," Truman said as she opened the door and stepped aside to let them through.

There was, of course, no stench that they could smell, and the taste that was already in their mouths thankfully did not any stronger. It was the U.P.E.'s exhaustion and strain instead that hit them like a tide crashing against the shore, easily shaken off, but there all the same.

There were two occupants in the small bedroom, but only one of them was visible. Looking at the U.P.E. now, it was difficult to believe that it could overpower a single person, let alone successfully attack and hypnotically subdue twenty-seven people for two months. It was resting on a plastic tarp that had been spread out on the carpeted floor, sitting up against the bed. Darlene had been accurate when they had said that the U.P.E. was small- there was no way that the length of its fuzzy brown body measured more than three and a half feet from it the tips of its drooping antennae to its slightly singed feet. Its wingspan was perhaps twice that, but it was hard to tell, as the edges of its wings were curled inward towards its body.

The wings themselves were the same sepia brown as its body, with a strange, bright purple decorating the edges. Only the inner part of the wings could be seen, as its back was pressed against Eddie's bed. The eyespots on its forewing were about the size of a dinner plate, outlined in the same shade of sickly yellow that one might see in the eyes of a longtime alcoholic. The 'iris' was a washed out black, and within it was a pale pink circle looked similar to a constricted pupil. It was safe to assume that these were the eyespots that the U.P.E. used to hypnotize its victims, just as it was safe to assume that these eyespots were more vivid in color when it was healthy.

To describe this creature as half-butterfly, half-man would be inaccurate. The ratio was perhaps closer to three-quarters butterfly and one-quarter man. It had six limbs, the upper and middle limbs stick-thin and ending in three clawed fingers. The thicker lower limbs split off from its torso in a manner distantly similar to a human's. It sat with its legs spread out on the tarp, knees (wait, did this thing even have bones?) bent. It cradled an empty jar in its upper limbs protectively. Other jars, the glass free of residue, were scattered around the room.

The creature didn't appear to have a neck, its head transitioning right into its torso. It's large, multifaceted eyes seemed to stare at them, dully curious. Occasionally its gaze would flicker to the right (where the invisible occupant was standing) but it wasn't alarmed by Truman and Sasha's sudden presence. Was it too exhausted to be wary of strangers? Or was it merely unafraid of humans? Its emotions were hidden behind its bizarre, bug eyes and underneath its fatigue. Its antennae twitched a little, but were otherwise still. A long proboscis, sticky with what looked like grape jelly, curled near its mouth.

The U.P.E. stared at the two of them for maybe three seconds before switching its attention to Mrs. Bodkin, whose previously pleasant expression had become strained. Weakly, the U.P.E. held the empty jar out in her direction. A request for more? Mrs. Bodkin didn't seem to notice, her wide eyes were focused on the room's invisible occupant. The jar abruptly fell from the U.P.E.'s fingers, landing on the tarp with a soft thud.

"I think it wants more jam," Truman said to Mrs. Bodkin.

"O-of course!" Mrs. Bodkin said a little too loudly. "Chuck, go see if there's any more in the pantry." Chuck, who had been standing uselessly in the hallway, hurried back towards the kitchen, glad to have something to do. "Little feller's just been tearing through all my preserves," she said, shaking her head almost fondly. "I think he's got a sweet tooth."

"Butterflies do not have teeth," Sasha said.

"Pardon me, Professor," Mrs. Bodkin scoffed as Chuck returned with a jar full of orange jelly. "I don't know if he'll like the apricot," she said, unscrewing the top.

Mr. Bodkin crossed his arms over his chest. "I ain't letting that bug eat my strawberry," he declared with finality.

Mrs. Bodkin rolled her eyes and walked into the room, handing the jar over to the U.P.E., who mustered up all of its strength to grasp it eagerly. She kept her eyes pointedly averted from the space to the U.P.E.'s right.

"So, where exactly did you find this thing?" Truman asked.

"My husband spotted it lying in the backyard last night," Mrs. Bokdin answered. She rattled of the lie without missing a beat. Mr. Bodkin was less confident, looking down at his shoes. "He was pretty bad off- the bug, not my husband."

"And you brought it into your home and fed it," Sasha stated.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you just kill it?" Sasha inquired. He was no doubt scrutinizing Mrs. Bodkin's features for signs of falsehood behind his dark glasses. "Why bring such a strange, potentially dangerous creature into your house? Surely you had the means to kill it."

"Well, we weren't sure if we were allowed to," Mrs. Bodkin replied. "I was worried that if we shot it, those high-cotton environmentalist types would come down here and raise a stink if this little guy turned out to be some kind of endangered species."

"I see," Sasha said. _She's put quite a bit of thought into her story,_ he thought to Truman, something resembling respect in his tone. "And you did not inform the sheriff of this, because?"

A look of feigned confusion came over Mrs. Bodkin's face. "We weren't sure if this sort of thing was in his jurisdiction. We thought maybe we ought to call the Division of Wild Life, but their office was closed, and then we wanted to see if this thing would die on its own before we wasted the state's time…"

Truman watched the U.P.E. as Mrs. Bodkin prattled on, observing it as it consumed the apricot jam, seemingly without a thought for anything else. It held the jar in both of its 'hands' as it greedily gulped down its contents. The sight reminded him, for some reason, of Doctor Boole's youngest daughter of all things. He remembered that she used to wait for her father in HQ.'s cafeteria when she was a kid, drinking a milkshake in a manner similar to how the U.P.E. was eating its jam, her legs swinging under the table as she quietly watched the other people in the cafeteria. The U.P.E. certainly did not resemble pale-haired Corina Boole at all, but there was innocence in this being's actions, innocence that was at odds with all that it had done over the past couple of months.

The bedsprings creaked softly, and there was a slight depression on the edge of the bed. The U.P.E. turned its head in the direction of the sound as it slurped up the last of the jam. Did Eddie not know that he had given his position away? Not that he'd ever really been hidden from them to begin with. Although he couldn't be seen, he could be felt, and his psychic signature was all over this house, just as it had been in the forest and in the general store. Some stealth specialists back at the agency could mask themselves completely, but that sort of thing took years of rigorous training. Eddie was just a fifteen year old boy who only had trial and error to rely upon as a teaching method.

He had to have already known that they knew he was here, if only because Sasha had probably barged into his mind and told him so. He likely wasn't supposed to be in this room right now, if his mother's reaction was any indication. Their plan must have been for Eddie to hide in some other part of the house while Truman and Sasha took the U.P.E. off of their shoulders. It would've worked too- it didn't look like Eddie had anything to with Papadonkus' plot, and nobody other than his parents and Randy Ratowski had any idea that he was psychic. His parents clearly cared about him, and he wasn't in any immediate danger, nor was he a threat to the town. He wasn't stealing or causing any sort of trouble. He was scared and anxious, but Truman had no way of knowing if that was because of the U.P.E., the events around town, or he'd been in this state ever since his psychic abilities had awakened.

In situations like this, the field agents were advised to recruit the young psychic, if possible. Truman didn't think that now was an appropriate time to be handing out business cards (and he could hardly imagine himself being able to convince anybody to sign up for the Psychonauts anyway), but he thought that it couldn't hurt to try and talk to Eddie himself, if only to alleviate some of the younger teen's fears.

Gently, he reached out telepathically, letting his presence be known to Eddie without verbally communicating with him. The action was the psychic equivalent of knocking on a door before entering, and Eddie, after some hesitation, let him in. _Hi,_ Truman thought, unsure of exactly what he should say. _Been one hell of a day, hasn't it?_

Eddie didn't reply. The edge of the comforter lifted up and began twisting itself, the fabric being manipulated by nervous fingers.

"Are you sure that this bug is the culprit?" Mrs. Bodkin asked.

"Yes," Sasha answered.

"But look at him," Mrs. Bodkin countered, raising her arm in the U.P.E.'s direction. "He don't look like he could hurt a fly. And why would he attack a bunch of kids anyway?"

"It's not working on its own," Sasha explained, "but we are one-hundred percent certain that this being hypnotized those students."

"But how do you know that?"

"Edie, stop asking all these dang questions and let them do their jobs," Chuck, impatient to get the three of them out of his home.

"I just want to make sure that they're not wasting their time here by arresting the wrong suspect," she said. "The bug's not guilty just because he's a smelly abomination against God and nature."

Truman tried again. _We're not here for you,_ he thought. _We only want the bug. You haven't done anything wrong._ He waited for a reply, and when none came, he added, _you've actually helped us out a lot._

 _I know all that, sir,_ Eddie said tentatively. His invisibility wavered, and he flickered between seen and unseen for just a second. Truman pretended not to notice. _That German guy told me._

That German Guy was still arguing with Eddie's mother over the U.P.E.'s guilt. "We have multiple witnesses stating that they saw this creature flying around the town," Sasha said. "One of them saw it breaking into a victim's bedroom the night he was attacked."

"What witnesses?"Mrs. Bodkin asked skeptically. "The Sheriff would've had wanted posters with his mug on them plastered all over town if anybody had actually seen him."

"These witnesses were not human. Agent Zanotto can speak to trees."

"Trees?" Chuck said with disbelief.

"How can a plant be a reliable witness?" Mrs. Bodkin argued. "They can't see. Or can they?" She directed that question at Truman.

"It's complicated," Truman said, wishing that Sasha had not divulged that information.

"Do plants have eyes?" Mrs. Bodkin asked, genuine interest seeping into her skepticism.

"No, they don't," Truman answered.

"Then how…how do they see?" Mr. Bodkin scratched the top of his head, perplexed. "You did say that they could see, right?"

Sasha responded to the question before Truman could, giving a long explanation on plant vision, an explanation that sounded factual enough, but could have easily been something that he had made up on the fly. Half of what he was saying appeared to be incomprehensible to the Bodkins, and they both regarded him with furrowed brows.

 _Can you really talk to plants?_ Eddie asked telepathically, his voice low and shy.

 _Yeah,_ Truman replied.

 _That's weird. No offense._

 _None taken._

 _It's weirder than being able to turn invisible, I think._

 _Definitely._

 _Can I talk to plants? Am I gonna walk by a flower one day and hear it say 'hi' to me or something?_

 _No, I don't think so. It's genetic._

 _Oh. Well that's a relief. Not knockin' it or anything, but I already got enough weird junk happening to me without being able to hear the grass hollerin' at me every time I step on the lawn._ The invisible fingers on the bed stopped pulling at the sheets. The U.P.E.'s eyes darted between the two of them, its antennae twitching as their psychic conversation continued. _Do you like talking to plants?_

 _Yeah, I do._

 _Oh._ Eddie sounded a little disappointed by the answer. _I guess you like being psychic too?_

 _I like it okay. But I've always been this way, so I don't know what being a non-psychic is like._

 _Well, I was non-psychic for fifteen years, and I think I got a pretty raw deal, if I'm honest,_ Eddie admitted. _No offense, but I liked my life better when it was normal._

 _I don't blame you for that._

 _Being invisible don't bother me as much now that I can kind of control it,_ he continued. _But I used to just vanish anytime I zoned out. My boss caught me once and I got so scared that I quit my job. My mom made up that story about a family emergency and I guess everyone just accepted that._

 _Mr. Ratowski told us about that._

 _You talked to Randy? What'd he say about me? Does he think I caused this mess?_ He flickered again, in his panic.

 _Sort of. He thinks that you're being forced to work with the Flatwoods Monster,_ Truman thought.

 _Oh shoot. He would think that,_ Eddie thought, irritated. _He's a good boss, but he's got some nutty ideas. He thinks that aliens built the pyramids._

 _They didn't,_ Sasha cut in, still conversing with Eddie's parents and doing a fairly good job of distracting them while Truman talked to their son.

 _Crap like that is why I can't go to school here no more,_ Eddie thought. _Especially since all this junk that started happening with the juniors. What if I had stayed in school while this stuff was happening and I got found out? This whole town woulda strung me up without a thinkin' twice._ His thoughts became rapid. _It just ain't fair, man._

A strange thing happened at that moment. The U.P.E. lifted its left upper arm out and began patting the air next to it, the motion similar to that of a person comforting a friend. The touch seemed to trigger something, and Eddie gradually became visible, seemingly without his notice. The glum form of a teenage boy not much younger than Truman and Sasha appeared on the bed, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. Long, brown bangs covered his eyes and his mouth was set in a self-pitying frown. He sighed and looked up to see all of the adults in the room staring at him. "Oh, shoot," he said upon realizing that his invisibility had lapsed. He glared at the U.P.E. "Look what you gone and made me do, B.B.," he said, sounding more annoyed than angry.

"B.B.?" Sasha said, raising an eyebrow.

"Stands for Butterfly Boy," Eddie grumbled.

"Ah," Sasha said, enlightened. "Cute."

"I suppose," Mrs. Bodkin began, a nervous edge in her voice, "that I've got some explanations to make."

No, not really," Truman said. "We knew that-"

"It was all my idea!" Mr. Bodkin blurted out, interrupting Truman. He came around to stand protectively in front of Mrs. Bodkin. "The story about Eddie being away, and me finding that bug was all mine."

"Chuck, you couldn't lie your way out of a paper bag," Mrs. Bodkin declared, irritated that he was trying to take credit for the story that she had obviously come up with.

"Arrest me and leave my wife and son alone," Mr. Bodkin demanded gravely.

"Why would we do that?" Truman asked.

"Lying to a federal agent is technically a crime," Sasha clarified.

"Oh. Right."

"No!" Eddie yelled, shooting to his feet. The action caused him to bump into B.B.'s wing, nearly toppling him over. "Leave my folks out of this! They were just tryin' to protect me!"The shouting must've excited B.B., as he shakily attempted to stand. He got about half way before his legs gave out and he fell back onto the floor.

"All of you just calm down," Mrs. Bodkin said, her hands on her hips. She seemed to have included B.B. in that statement, as she gave him the same stern look that she had given her husband and son. She took a deep breath and addressed Sasha and Truman in an honest manner. "The story was all me," she confessed. "I told my son to go invisible and hide while you two dealt with B.B. Of course, he was supposed to be hiding in the laundry room. I don't know why he stayed in here."

Eddie looked at his feet sheepishly.

"We knew that Eddie was here the whole time," Truman said, trying to calm the family down. "As for the whole lying thing, don't worry about it. We'll, uh..."

"We will just pretend that you did not," Sasha supplied helpfully.

"Yeah, that," Truman agreed. "Nobody's getting arrested okay?"

"Nobody human, anyway," Sasha added.

"Er, right. B.B. is the only in any actual trouble."

"So what're you gonna do with him?" Eddie said, walking over to the middle of the room to stand in front of B.B. "You gonna arrest him? I know he done wrong, but it's not all his fault!"

"Eddie, don't start with all this again," Mr. Bodkin said, shaking his head.

"Are you aware of what this Unregistered Paranormal Entity has done?" Sasha inquired, mouth set sternly.

Eddie shrank back, as unused to dealing with law enforcement as his father was. "I-I do know, sir," he stammered, holding his arms up defensively.

"This creature has locked twenty-seven students - your peers- into a trance that forces them to act like mindless zombies." He took a few steps forward into the room, standing almost toe to toe with Eddie. "Some of them have been trapped in this state for as long as two months. Their families are terrified for them; their friends do not know what to do, and the other students have no idea whether or not they'll be the next victim." Without warning, he telekinetically pulled one of the Otterpop wrappers out of Truman's pocket and floated it over to his hand. "It was all for this," he said, holding the wrapper up for Eddie to see. "That U.P.E. - you call him B.B.?- it's only motivation was to obtain popsicles. I'm very interested to hear your explanation on how this isn't all its fault."

Eddie's face, somewhat flushed, was gripped with uncertainty. His mouth opened, then closed, and he bit down on his lower lip. "I wasn't defending…" He cut himself off, looking over Sasha's shoulder at his parents. Neither of them could help- Mrs. Bodkin could only look at her son sympathetically as he tried to explain himself to the intimidating Agent Nein. From behind him, B.B. struggled to his feet and mustered enough strength to take a shaky step forward, and then two more, before stumbling head first right into Eddie, almost knocking him over. He wrapped his upper and middle limbs around the teen's legs, peeking around his body to look at up at Sasha. Sasha, surprised, moved back a little. B.B.'s wings were spread out, taking up nearly the entire width of the small bedroom. Truman and Sasha were on their guards at first, unsure of what the creature's intentions were, but the 'eyes' on B.B.'s wings remained dull, and he merely hid behind Eddie in the same way that a shy child would hug the legs of a parent. It was a strange display, but not a threatening one.

Even more bizarre was Eddie's reaction to the whole thing. He wasn't the least bit startled or disgusted by B.B.'s embrace; if anything his confidence seemed to be bolstered, and when he spoke next he did so with more surety. "I never said that what he did wasn't bad," he said, unconsciously putting his hand on the bug's head. "But he didn't know any better! This dickhead was givin' him popsicles to get him to do all that stuff! He's the guy you should be lookin' for!"

"Are you talking about Anton Papadonkus?" Truman asked.

"Yeah!," Eddie answered, surprised that they knew who he was talking about.

"How did you know about Papadonkus' involvement?" Sasha inquired, dropping his scary government agent act and regarding B.B. curiously. "Can you communicate with him? I had not thought that he could understand human language."

Eddie fell back into uncertainty, scratching his head. "I don't really…we don't actually talk? It's more like he can send images straight into my head? And I can send them back? I don't really know what it's called or how I do it…"

"It's a form of non-verbal telepathy that's often used when communicating with animals," Sasha explained, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "The two of you must share some sort of psychic-link, as that's usually the way that this sort of thing works."

"How can he have a psychic link with that thing?" Mr. Bodkin said before Eddie could confirm or deny having a link with B.B. "He tried to set it on fire, if I recall correctly. Ain't exactly the start to a beautiful friendship."

"Chuck," Mrs. Bodkin started warningly. "We already discussed this. If Eddie says that he's got a connection-"

"I'm not denying that!" Mr. Bodkin interrupted. "They got a bond, for sure, but I'm just sayin' that I don't understand why!"

"You think I get it?" Eddie broke in angrily. "I haven't understood anything that's been happening to me for the past four months!" He was yelling now, the dam blocking his fear and frustration suddenly collapsing. "I was all set to burn this little guy to a crisp and you know, get back to something resembling my old life, and now look at me!" He gestured wildly down at B.B., whose inhuman eyes were fixed on the plastic wrapper that Sasha still held. "I'm standing here trying to help him out, even though he's caused me and the town so much trouble! What's wrong with me? Why do I feel so bad for him?" He sighed, out of breath, his shoulders slumping. Getting all that off of his chest didn't seem to have made him feel any better, as he still didn't have any of the answers that he was looking for.

It was hard to tell what B.B.'s thoughts about were at this moment, as its eyes, as alien as they were, reveled no insights into its feelings at this moment. If Truman focused his emphatic abilities, he could pick up a good deal of affection directed at Eddie (despite his previous rant) and the same sadness that one would feel after being betrayed by somebody one had considered a close friend. Huh. Truman hadn't considered that this weird bug thing could feel such complex emotions. He found himself pitying B.B., and could easily see why Eddie felt the same way.

Mrs. Bodkin entered the room to stand by her son. Her nose wrinkled in disgust, but she shook it off quickly. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"You're not gonna kill him, are you?" Eddie said, voice a near whisper. "You can't, right?"

"We did not come here with the intention of killing anything," Sasha replied. His tone could not be called gentle by any means, but it had softened. He glanced downwards at B.B. and reached out, offering the wrapper. B.B. snatched it eagerly with one of his middle limbs. "We only want to figure out how to get this being to release its victims," he said, watching as B.B. crinkled the plastic between its spindly fingers. "We are well aware that Anton Papadonkus is the mastermind behind this plot."

"Dick-head Donkus," Eddie spat hatefully, gritting his teeth. He pushed at B.B., trying to free himself from the butterfly's grasp. "Let me go, B.B., I can't walk with you huggin' up on me. C'mon, let's go sit back down, okay?" He pried himself loose and led B.B. back to the bed, and once there B.B. plopped right back down on the tarp in its original sitting position, still clutching the Otterpop wrapper.

"So do you know exactly what the deal is between Papadonkus and B.B.?" Truman said as he walked into the room. "We knew that the popsicles were involed, but that's about it. Is there anything else to this?"

"I just know that Donkus got him hooked on those things," Eddie said as he sat back down on the bed, careful not to jostle B.B.'s wings. "I've been talkin' to him for a while, but its not easy to get what he's tryin' to tell me when all he can do is send me pictures."

"Wait, is that why those kids were going nuts over those Otterpops at first?" Mr. Bodkin asked. He was the only one still lingering in the doorway, and he didn't seem like he had any intention of entering the room.

Eddie shrugged. "I don't think he meant to do that? He doesn't really understand how his powers work. He's kinda like me, if you think about it." The comparison made Mr. Bodkin frown, and he didn't respond.

"He doesn't understand his powers?" Sasha said, for once unable to hide his surprise. "How can that be? Are you certain of this?"

Again, Eddie shrugged. "I'm just guessing from the memories that he's shown me," Eddie admitted.

"Have you two been talking a lot?" Truman asked.

"Yeah. He was kind of out of it yesterday night, but we've been doing the uh…telepathy thing since this morning, when he was feeling a bit better. He's a friendly little guy."

"If you can get past the whole hypnosis thing," Mrs. Bodkin pointed out dryly.

"Can you tell us what B.B.'s told you?" Truman said. "He might have told you something that we can use as evidence against Mr. Papadonkus."

"I guess. Hard to forget anything a giant butterfly projects into your head," Eddie replied after a moment of thought.

"Go get some chairs, Chuck," Mrs. Bodkin ordered as she grabbed the lone desk chair in the room for herself. "It's gonna be a long story, boys. I'd take a seat if I were you."

* * *

Eddie's story was a long one, if only because he had decided to give them a rundown of the past four months, rather than the past twenty-four hours or so. There was a short mental debate between the two agents over whether to allow this, as Eddie had only become involved in this case very recently, and much of his story would be irrelevant to the matter at hand. They decided to let him tell the story the way he wanted to, reasoning that B.B. was not a threat to anyone else, or in danger of dying anytime soon. Anton Papadonkus was still out there, yes, but they didn't have any leads on where he was, and likely would not until they either interrogated B.B. or received a call from Sheriff Walls.

And so Eddie began his story on the day that his psychic powers first manifested, an evening in mid-June, right after his shift at the general store had ended. He'd been walking home alone that night, as his father had had a plumbing emergency on the other side of the county that he had needed to deal with. At some unknown point during that walk home he had completely disappeared, without even noticing that he had done so.

"I remember that I saw one of my friends riding his bike across the street," Eddie said. "I waved at him, but he didn't wave back, even though he was looking right at me. I just thought that maybe he didn't see me or somethin'".

"That's because he didn't see you. You were invisible," Mrs. Bodkin pointed out.

Eddie had shrugged the matter off and continued his walk home. He had entered his home through the front door while his mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen, and after yelling some vague greeting, had gone straight to his room to change out of his work clothes while still invisible. Neither Eddie nor his mother had noticed anything amiss- this had been their usual routine- until Mrs. Bodkin had called her son for dinner.

Mrs. Bodkin had realized something was wrong the very instant that Eddie had entered the dining area. "It was the strangest thing," Mrs. Bodkin recollected. "I couldn't see him at all, and yet I knew he was standing there, waiting for me to get out of the way so that he could get some food. I said 'where are you at, Eddie?' and he was like, 'You're looking right at me, what's the matter with you?' That's when I reached out and touched him, right on the arm. And then he just reappeared!" Mrs. Bodkin shook her head incredulously at the memory. "I jumped so high I darn near hit my head on the ceiling!"

"You screamed really loud too," Eddie added. "Like a cat fallin' into a puddle."

"Hush boy, you screamed too."

Mr. Bodkin arrived home a few minutes later to find his wife and son still in a panicked state. Upon hearing about the strange event, Mr. Bodkin (who knew nothing about psychics or how their powers worked) had calmly suggested that perhaps the whole event had been a fluke, and that Eddie should perhaps wait a bit and see if it happened again before worrying about it.

They began worrying about it the next day, when Eddie had vanished right before their eyes at the breakfast table. A simple touch was enough to shake him out of it, but it became clear that Eddie's problem wasn't just a one-time thing, and that it could happen again at any moment. The Bodkins had been stumped. Who were they supposed to call in a situation like this? The family physician? The school? A psychologist? The phone book offered no answers. Of course, they had heard of the Psychonauts, but calling them was out of the question- their number wasn't in the phone book for one, and even if it had been, the Bodkins would have been reluctant to do so anyway, as the Psychonauts as an organization fell somewhere between the CIA and the Illuminati in terms of trustworthiness. They wound up calling nobody that morning, or in the months that followed.

Eddie, despite his growing confusion and fear, continued to go about his days as though everything was normal, if only because he hadn't known what else to do. His disappearances occurred once a day, at random times, but he quickly learned to recognize when it had happened, and was able to make himself re-appear within a few seconds. His tendency to be overlooked by others benefited him during that time, as his odd affliction struck him several times while working in the general store. It was stressful, especially in those early days, when Eddie was convinced that his powers would manifest as him burning down his house instead of him just vanishing. But like anybody who underwent a major life change, Eddie adjusted and adapted. He realized that anytime he went invisible (to other people anyway- he was always able to look down and see himself just fine) he felt a strangely pleasant pulse in the center of his brain, and that if he felt that, he needed to make himself re-appear, a process as simple as him merely closing his eyes and shaking himself out of it.

No new powers developed during that time. Eddie was not reading minds or accidently flinging things across the room. For a while, he and his parents were hopeful that he could go on like that with no harm done until they figured out what they should do. On more optimistic days, they hoped that perhaps this 'whole vanishing act' (as they called it) was just another kind of teenage phase, and that maybe it would fade away, like such phases often did, as Eddie got older. In any case, they figured that Eddie would be able to manage just fine as long as he didn't get caught.

Of course, that hope died on July 14th, when Randy Ratowski witnessed Eddie's vanishing act firsthand.

"He was just coming out of the stockroom when I went invisible," Eddie said, his shoulders slumping. "I had my back turned, so I didn't see him walk out. Bad timing, that's what it was."

"What did he say to you after?" Truman asked, leaning forward with interest. The chair that Mr. Bodkin had provided for him was old, and creaked when he moved.

"Nothing. He just kind of blinked at me, looking all confused." Eddie sighed and shrugged. "I don't think he really understood what he saw, but he didn't say anything to me that night."

"You never returned to work afterwards," Sasha stated.

Eddie had been too afraid to do so, and his equally frightened parents had forbidden him from going back. His father had called Randy the next day with the story about the family emergency in South Carolina, and from the town's perspective, Eddie had been absent from that point on. It was then that they realized that it wasn't enough for Eddie to make himself re-appear when he went invisible; he had to learn how to stop himself from vanishing in the first place. That particular task had seemed daunting at first. Big cities in bigger states had resources for young psychics like Eddie, but there was nothing available in sparsely populated Braxton County. Eddie had only himself, and the well-meaning, but often misguided support of his parents to aid him.

Surprisingly enough, he found that once he got past his initial apprehension, controlling his powers was actually really simple, once he realized what triggered it. It happened when his mind was focused on something else. His thoughts would drift off, usually when he was alone (he never disappeared while interacting with another person, only when nobody was paying attention to him, which due to his quiet nature, was quite often) and then he'd feel a sensation in the center of his mind, a sensation was difficult for him to describe. It felt light and comfortable, as though being indiscernible to others was his natural state, and the previous fifteen years of being seen were an accident.

The comfort with invisibility troubled him at first. He wasn't the most sociable fellow around, but he got along well with others, and he didn't consider himself a shy person. Why, then, did being invisible inspire such feelings of contentment? Was there something mentally wrong with him that he just hadn't noticed until now? When he brought this up to his mother, she had theorized that perhaps it wasn't as deep as him having some psychological desire to be hidden. She thought that it came down only to preference, something similar to liking one brand of boots over another. Eddie's brain was fine with being visible, but if given the chance, it would make Eddie invisible, and there was probably nothing more to it than that.

In any case, Eddie was able to keep himself from disappearing by mentally stopping his brain from experiencing that sensation. The process was simple: he would pause and shake it off, and that was all there was to it. The simplicity was shocking, and none of the Bodkins trusted it at first. Late July turned into late August and by then Eddie and his parents had decided that they would risk discovery and allow Eddie to go to school, as it would have been incredibly suspicious if he just stopped attending. On the night that they came to this decision, Eddie had, for the briefest of moments, experienced a taste so foul that he almost gagged the second it came over him. It went away when he swallowed, and Eddie subsequently forgot about it, chalking it up to a stress-induced imagining on his part.

The next morning Bradley Vipperman was found shuffling towards his home, mouth agape and eyes vacant. Eddie, upon hearing about it from his mother, felt an inexplicable dread hit him like a fist to the stomach. That dread, and the certainty that something terrible would befall him if he attempted to retake his place in Sutton society next week, worsened as Bradley Vipperman's condition remained the same. His father tried to reassure him that nothing supernatural was afoot, that Vipperman had melted his brain doing something foolish and that what was all there was to the matter, but the words did little to alleviate the dread.

Three days before the school term began, Eddie begged his mother to call the school and continue the lie about him being away. Mrs. Bodkin, perhaps sensing that how much worse things were going to get, had done so, informing the secretary that Eddie would be attending school in South Carolina for the foreseeable future. If the circumstances had been different, perhaps this claim would have been investigated- Mrs. Bodkin had provided few details to the secretary that she had spoken to. However, luck was on their side in the most twisted way possible, and Eddie Bodkin was forgotten as the number of afflicted teens increased.

The weeks that followed were dark ones. Before then, Eddie hadn't known that it was possible to feel so terribly anxious and so utterly bored simultaneously. He was once again cooped up in the house for an indefinite period of time, time that seemed to stretch and stretch and stretch the longer his exile went on. His fears stretched alongside his time, mounting with every day that passed with no resolution to mystery of the zombified teens. Every car that passed their home was one coming to take him away, every visitor that stopped by to see his parents was an officer that had noticed that something funny was going on at the Bodkin's house. The local news, both televised and printed, offered no relief, only the knowledge that the town was becoming increasingly desperate. His parents did their best to help- Mrs. Bodkin always tried to look on the bright side of things and did her best to keep her son's spirits up, and Mr. Bodkin kept an ear out for any news relevant to Eddie's predicament.

The effort did not go unnoticed, and Eddie had been appreciative of the lengths that his folks had gone to keep him safe. But thoughts, bizarre and grim, kept flashing through his mind. What if, he pondered while thumbing through an old western novel, he was the one responsible for all of this? What if his peers were acting so funny because his powers were going haywire and he just didn't know it? The thoughts were, of course, ridiculous, and Mrs. Bodkin was quick to tell him so when he had come to her with the notion.

Those sorts of thoughts and wild ideas came to him often, likely the result of his long isolation and constant state of worry. Ironically, the only thing that really eased his anxiety was his lone psychic ability. Invisiblity made him feel safe-safe from being accused, safe from being scorned, and safe from whoever the actual culprit of this crime was. When his books, video games, and television shows could distract him no longer, he began to practice disappearing and re-appearing at will.

"I was surprised by how easy it was," Eddie said reflectively. "Why is that? It seems like it should've been hard."

"Your powers are as much a part of you as your arms are," Sasha replied. "You don't have any trouble picking things up do you?"

He practiced mostly in his room at first, vanishing for hours on end and re-appearing only when with his parents called him. He never tried to use any other power, as it had never occurred to him that he even had other powers. When he could take no more of being stuck in his room, he snuck out to walk in the woods behind his house. Something had felt off, he had noted as he wandered through the forest the first time, something weird in the atmosphere. In the back of his mouth, he tasted something that reminded him of gasoline, though he hadn't known what was causing it. Despite that, the walks were a refreshing change of pace from the inside of his house.

"I snuck up on a squirrel one time," Eddie said proudly. "Snatched him right up by the tail."

"We ate it for dinner that night," Mrs. Bodkin added. "It was good eats."

"Really?" Truman asked, part disgusted and part intrigued.

"No, of course not," Mr. Bodkin said sternly, frowning at his snickering wife and son.

More time passed. The State police, F.B.I. and C.D.C. came and went. More teens fell victim to the…whatever it was. By October, Eddie had both become adept at maintaining his invisibility for hours on end and very much fed up with the current state of affairs. He began to wonder if there was a way for him to figure out what was happening, or, at the very least, discover some vital clue that would bring the proper authorities closer to saving his fellow students. The idea was purely pragmatic on his part. Eddie had no desire to be a hero, but he did know that the sooner this mess was cleaned up, the sooner he'd be able to 'return to Sutton' and get back to his old life, the life that didn't involve his weird powers or any other sort of paranormal happening.

Of course, Eddie had no experience in investigating paranormal phenomena, but he concluded that making the attempt beat moping around his house for the hundredth day in a row. With that thought in mind, Eddie had set out early in the morning, without telling either of his parents about his plans. He had left well before dawn, allowing himself to fade into the heavy fog that hung around him. At 4:40 am, Sutton was silent and still, the stores long closed, the sidewalks devoid of pedestrians, and few cars on the roads. Walking through the town had been an eerie experience. The streets seemed unfamiliar, as though he'd been away for years rather than months. Searching for clues suddenly became secondary to reacquainting himself with the place that he'd lived in for his entire life. He passed by the suburb that most of his friends lived in, distantly remembering the last time that he'd seen any of them, wondering if any of them would still consider him a friend if they found out where he'd actually been for the past four months. He walked alongside the Elk River and down Main Street, his feet moving forward with little input from his brain until he was outside of the General Store. The sign to the store looked to be the same as it always had, the blocky red font reading _Sutton Dry Goods_ on a plain wooden background, old but well-cared for. Impulsively, he strode into the alley and entered the store though the side door that Randy always forgot to lock.

The store was just as empty as the town outside was. Eddie walked down each aisle, the sound of his footsteps on the wood floor the only noise in the dark store. He took his time, observing each shelf, noting that whoever Randy had hired to replace him clearly didn't put as much effort into keeping the stock neat and organized as he had. He smothered the temptation to reorganize the messy M&M's display, but couldn't resist taking a package of Reece's Peanut Buttercups for himself. He left his payment on the counter- Eddie was no thief- and exited the store.

He went home shortly afterwards, having neither sensed nor seen anything amiss. The walk home had been a somber one, as he had realized that his life would never be what it was, even if every single victim miraculously returned to normal the next day. He could return to school, and get his job back at the General Store, and his day to day life likely would not change. But his secret was something he would carry with him forever, along with the fear of that secret being found out. Maybe his friends would be cool with it- or maybe not. Before all this had happened, Eddie's plan for the future had been to take over his father's business. But would anyone trust a plumber who could turn himself invisible at will? He had had no answer for this question so he merely focused on getting home before the sun rose.

He did not attempt another venture out into the town until a week later, when he was more psychologically prepared, and had an actual plan of action in mind. During the week between trips, he had made a list of locations to investigate, a list that included the homes of the victims (the ones that he could look up in the phone book, anyway), and the school itself, among other places. He wasn't sure what he'd find, if anything. The best case scenario was that he found something that he could anonymously inform the Sheriff about, which would point the authorities in the right direction. What that something was, he didn't know- it could be the theoretical device or drug that was causing the problem, or maybe a suspicious person lurking around. The thought that he might run into an attack in progress had crossed his mind, and it wasn't a scenario that he was eager to encounter. He liked to think that he would have tried to intervene, had he witnessed one of his peers being assaulted, but wasn't really sure of what he could do, considering the fact that his one power suited flight over fight.

Luckily, such a thing had not occurred. His second trip into town had proved fruitful, but not in the way that he had hoped for. What he had discovered was a sensation- more specifically, a strong, gut-churning taste. It had come over him at the school and had been such a shock that he had gone visible (thankfully, nobody was hanging around the school at three in the morning). It got worse as he visited the homes of the victims, and he'd been gagging by the time he arrived at the fifth and final stop (Chris Sealoft's house). The taste had been so bad and he'd become so desperate to get rid of it that he broke into the General Store and bought himself a another piece of candy before returning to his house.

Unpleasant as the experience had been, it was, in fact, a clue. As he walked home, the taste faded, and with the nasty distraction gone, Eddie had been able to recall that he had actually tasted it before (although not as intensely) while walking through the woods. This hadn't actually been something that he could slip in a note to the Sheriff, and he had suspected that the fact that he had picked up on it at all was probably connected to his psychic abilities. He concluded then, that he would need to start looking through the woods if he wanted to find something that the authorities could use.

He found something much better (or worse, depending on how one looked at it) after a week of searching through the woods at night. Yesterday, only a few hours before Sasha and Truman had arrived in Sutton in the shabby Buick, Eddie had spotted an enormous bug clinging to a tree, apparently feeding from a tree. He had stared at the strange creature, open mouthed, not quite believing his eyes at first. The sheer shock of seeing such a thing had held him in his place, his mouth filled with non-existent sludge. All had been silent in the forest, the only noise being the sucking sounds coming from the moth…no, from the butterfly's proboscis. Eddie had watched as it finished feeding and returned the proboscis back into its oral cavity. Its antennae had twitched, and it had sluggishly turned its head in Eddie's direction, and for one horrifying moment Eddie had been absolutely certain that the monster had seen him. But then it looked away and launched itself off of the tree and into the air, smacking its head on a branch just above it. Eddie's fear had become bafflement as he watched the creature sway drunkenly in the air.

"My first thought was, when I came out of my shock, was that it weren't using its wings quite right," Eddie said. "It was barely flapping them."

"That's because B.B., in all likelihood, does not use his wings for flight. They're too small to support his frame." Sasha explained. "He is a psychic creature, so he uses levitation."

"What, really? He's psychic like us?" Eddie's eyes widened at the revelation. "I didn't know that."

B.B. blinked in his weird buggy way. Evidently this was news to him as well.

B.B. had levitated for a good two minutes, bumping into branches and bramble, before crashing into another maple tree. It had hugged the tree for some time, claws digging into the bark as it rested its body against the trunk before feeding.

Three things had occurred to Eddie then. One was that this creature, whatever it was, was small and physically weak. It was no bigger than a four year old, and its limbs were thin, almost twig-like. It was also ill, the odd way it flew aroudn was proof of that. Two, it couldn't sense Eddie, or if it could, it was too wrapped up in its own sickness to really care about his presence. Three, and perhaps most important, was that this grotesque, foul-tasting abomination, fed on sap, and was therefore not attacking Eddie's peers out of a need for sustenance.

It was that third realization that had spurred Eddie into movement. He had stalked away, blood boiling as he headed back towards his home. If the bug wasn't trying to feed itself, Eddie had thought as he hurried through the woods, than it was clearly causing all this trouble for its own amusement, which in Eddie's eyes, was a thousand times worse. A plan to take out the monster that had caused him, his family, and practically everyone he knew so much distress and despair formed in his mind as he made his way through the forest, a plan that involved a can of spray paint and a lighter.

Finding the bug afterwards had not been difficult, as it hadn't flown far from where Eddie had left it. It was feeding again and too focused on that task to hear the snap of twigs and the crunch of leaves under Eddie's sneakers as he approached. When he had gotten close enough he held both arms out from his body and flicked the lighter on before squeezing the trigger on the spray paint. An acrid smelling burst of flame had then formed, the resulting heat blinding him for a few seconds. Eddie hadn't seen whether his attack had hit, but he had heard the thump of the bug's body landing on the ground.

Within the past fifteen years of his life, Eddie had squashed, stomped and swatted numerous insects and pests without a second thought. There had been no reason for him to have felt any sort of empathy for this bug as it lay prone on the ground, singed and pitiful. And yet that was exactly what had happened when Eddie rushed over to assess the bug's injuries, and if need be, finish it off for good.

A wave of pure exhaustion was the first thing to hit Eddie as he stood over the small, still creature, and his knees had nearly buckled from the unexpected force of it. Adrenaline had still been coursing through his veins at that moment, so he had easily been able to shake the feeling off.

Confusion had then taken weariness's place, and Eddie suddenly found himself unable to remember how he had gotten to where he currently was. Suddenly disoriented, he had found himself wondering why he was flat on his back, staring up at the blackened boughs above when just a second ago he'd been sucking sap out that same tree that the boughs belonged to. But that couldn't have been right, because how could he be lying on the ground, his feet and hindwings stinging when he was standing on his unburned feet, his eyes a bit watery from the heat and throat a little sore, but otherwise okay? _Because that's what the bug's feeling,_ Eddie had concluded, realizing that he was somehow picking up on the bug's emotions. He had blinked once, twice, and then shook his head, clearing the foreign thoughts away and refocusing himself on his purpose which was to eliminate the being lying motionless and dazed before him.

When he had initially come up with his attack plan he had assumed that the bug, once immolated, would instantly burn up into a pile of ash. He hadn't considered that he might miss, or that the bug would have dodged the fire. Luckily, it had appeared that the bug had used up whatever was left of its energy, and was now completely immobile. Killing it would have been as simple as flicking the lighter on and spraying some paint. Except…Eddie's hands had been unable to do either of those things. He had both of his weapons ready, but his fingers had refused to obey the commands that his brain had sent them. Eddie wasn't a naturally violent person, and although the creature in question had caused an awful lot of trouble for everybody, the thought of it burning to death horrifically brought him no pleasure. Upon later reflection, Eddie eventually realized that not killing it with fire had been a smart move- if he could pick up on its exhaustion and confusion, he would have certainly been able to pick up on its pain as it died.

Fire was ruled out. But what to do now? Eddie had not brought any other weapons, and he had no offensive psychic abilities. He considered stomping its head in, as the bug's body appeared to be pretty frail. That option was a messy one, and Eddie hadn't been too keen on it for obvious reasons.

It was as he was mulling over the risks of trying to nab once of his parent's guns when the bug had slowly turned its head, it's hexagonal eyes falling on Eddie immediately. Eddie had picked up on no fear, no anger, and no resentment coming from the bug when it had spotted him- only relief. It had reached out one of its thin, shaky limbs towards him entreatingly, the action a plea for help. The limb was only able to maintain its position for only one second before it fell back into the dirt, but the creature's baffling relief still radiated from its mind.

It had made no sense to Eddie, as he hadn't been able to fathom why the little monster believed that it would receive any help from its attacker. "Knock it off," he had said, his tone as cold as he could force it to sound. "I'm the one that put you on the ground. Don't expect no mercy from me." The bug, unable to understand Eddie's words, had only stared up at him, eyes dull and dumb. The inexplicable trust hat it felt towards hadn't wavered at bit.

The desire to understand this creature's thoughts had triggered something in the middle of Eddie's brain, in that same spot that seemed to control Eddie's invisibility. An image had projected itself into Eddie's head, one of a reed thin man with thick black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, looking downwards with an air of smug pomposity. It was somebody that Eddie had recognized as Mr. Papadonkus, the most hated teacher at Braxton County High then the bug's head had lolled to the side, a clear sign that it had finally passed out. Its proboscis slid out of its mouth, the appendage resting on its fuzzy chest, and its antennae drooped over its head.

Eddie had known then that there was no way that he could kill the bug. There was more to this than met the eye, apparently. Why was Mr. Papadonkus in this creature's mind? Did they know each other? Did Mr. Papadonkus have something to do with why the bug was terrorizing Sutton? Was it possible that Eddie could find out somehow?

There had only been one option- he had to get this bug back to his parent's house and hope that they could help him get the whole story. After some maneuvering, he managed to get the bug onto his back and he slowly and clumsily made his way back to his house. The bug, while not heavy, was all deadweight, and his wings were cumbersome. The trip back took twice as long as it should have, and by the time Eddie had returned the moon was high in the sky.

Eddie had laid the bug carefully down onto the patio floor before quietly creeping back into his house. He had hoped that a reasonable explanation for what he was about show his parents would pop into his head, but nothing materialized while he was tip-toeing down the hall to his parent's door, nor when he was turning the knob. Nothing had come to him while he was shaking his father awake, and his mind was still blank when he'd successfully awoken both his mother and father. A silent minute passed, the darkness of the room hiding Eddie's expression of nervous apprehension and the sleepy confusion of his parents. And then Mrs. Bodkin had coughed and asked where that God-awful smell was coming from.

"Out there," Eddie had croaked in response, gesturing vaguely at the open bedroom door. "I found this thing out in the woods…"

Needless to say, the senior Bodkins hadn't been too happy to discover that their son had brought an unconscious butterfly monster to their doorstep. Mr. Bodkin had taken one look at the thing before turning back into his house. Mrs. Bodkin, overwhelmed by the 'smell', had pulled the collar of her robe up over her nose, gagging in disgust. "Good Lord, Eddie," she had said between coughs, "you ain't gonna be wearin' that shirt ever again."

"Sorry, ma."

"What's wrong with you? Why'd you bring this stinky dead monster here? Did you kill it?"

"It ain't dead, ma. Look." He had pointed down to the shallow rise and fall of the bug's chest. "Still breathing."

"I can't look at that thing. My eyes are watering up from the stench."

Mr. Bodkin had returned to the porch then, carrying with him one of his hunting rifles. He raised the gun, aiming towards the bug's head, his finger ready to pull the trigger should it have so much as twitched. "Best get to explainin' boy," he had said, voice calm and measured in spite of the frightening sight before him.

Most of the story had tumbled out of Eddie's mouth like a stack of plates crashing to the floor. He had spoken quickly and some of the words only made sense to him, but his parents had gotten the gist of it. "I can't believe that you snuck out!" Mrs. Bodkin had snapped halfway through, her anger muffled by the cotton of her robe. "You'll be washing the dishes for the next week, young man!"

Aw, what? But I was tryin' to save the town!" Eddie had protested. "It ain't like anyone could see me!"

"A curfew is still a curfew!"

"Let's discuss this later, okay?" Mr. Bodkin had interrupted before the argument could proceed any further. He steadily raised the gun again. "Now you both might want to step back inside."

"You're gonna shoot it now?" Eddie had asked queasily.

"Think I should. Before it wakes."

"Pop-"

"Chuck Bodkin, don't you dare!" Mrs. Bodkin had yelled, pushing the gun barrel downwards. "Not on the patio!"

Mr. Bodkin had stared at his wife. "Edie, it's dangerous. It needs to be put down."

"And just who is gonna be cleanin' up this things brains after you blow them out? Not me, that's for sure!" She pointed towards the tree line. "Put it down over there."

"Hmm. Well go on now, Eddie," Mr. Bodkin had said. "Let's get this done with.

But Eddie had hesitated. He had stood there motionless, throat seized by the dread his father's words had caused, and his inability to properly explain why he needed the bug alive. His father watched him expectantly, his brows meeting as he wondered what he hold-up was.

"What's the matter Eddie? You okay, son?" He had asked, clapping him on the shoulder "Don't worry about it, alright? You go in and get some sleep. Your mother and I will take care of this."

Eddie hadn't budged, his eyes drifting from the gun in his father's hands to the pathetic creature lying unconscious at their feet. "I…"he had started, dread finally loosening its grip on his voice. "I don't think…"

"Hold your horses, Chuck," Mrs. Bodkin had said, catching the anxiety and reluctance in Eddie's eyes. "Maybe we better not. You know, maybe we oughta call Sheriff Walls first."

"What? Why?" Mr. Bodkin had replied, surprised by the suggestion. "We don't know what this thing is capable of. For all we know we could end up like those teens if we let it live!"

"It looks like it's out cold."

"All the more reason to shoot it now!" Mr. Bodkin had replied. "And besides, what's the Sheriff gonna do? It's not like he can interrogate this thing!"

A short argument ensued, one that Mrs. Bodkin had obviously won by pointing out that if this creature was the culprit, than killing it may prove dangerous for its victims. Minutes later Mrs. Bodkin was laying a tarp down in Eddie's room as Eddie and his father dragged the bug in. Afterwards, there had been nothing else for them to do, other than wait for the bug to either wake up or die. They couldn't stay in the room with it- Mrs. Bodkin couldn't stand the smell (though Eddie had long since pushed the taste to the back of his mind)- so they went into the living room, where they spent the next four hours or so, one of them checking up on the bug every ten minutes or so. They had spent most of that time discussing what they would do come morning should the bug still be alive, coming to no real conclusion, as the situation was completely out of the realm of experience for the Bodkin family.

Sometime past four am, the bug regained consciousness. Eddie and his parents had lapsed into an anxious silence and were half-watching an Abbott and Costello movie on the television when it had happened, and Eddie had somehow, suddenly known that the bug was awake, though still very weak. He had gotten up from the couch and headed back to his room, without a word to his parents.

When he arrived the bug was still lying in the same spot and in the same position it had been left in hours ago. It turned its head towards the door when Eddie opened it, its limp antennae jumping a little. The relief it had felt back in the forest was at the forefront of its mind, though Eddie still had had no idea why it would feel such a way. Wild animals, when injured, usually responded with fear when approached by humans, although perhaps this thing wasn't technically an animal. Were bugs that different? Or was this bug just weird? Maybe it wasn't wild at all? It knew Anton Papadonkus, after all- was it some sort of freaky pet? Where did butterflies this big come from anyway? These questions ran through Eddies' mind, one after the other, and he was so distracted by them that he hadn't heard his father walk up to him. "So it's alive then?" Mr. Bodkin had said, sighing, not noticing that he had accidently startled his son. "Still not too late for us to shoot it."

"We can't, pop," Eddie had replied, watching as the bug attempted to sit up. Its efforts were in vain. "He ain't gonna be hurting anybody in this house."

Mr. Bodkin had regarded his son skeptically. "How do you know that? How do you know it ain't plannin' on turning us into zombies?"

"Because he's really happy to see us," Eddie had answered plainly. "Don't ask me why because I got no clue."

"That right?"

"What's going on back there?" Mrs. Bodkin had called from the living room. "Is it dead?"

It was not, and since they weren't going to shoot it, the Bodkins had resolved to do their best to keep it that way, so long as it stayed on its best behavior. The closest thing in the house that they had to tree sap was a half-full container of pure maple syrup, so Mrs. Bodkin poured that into a big bowl as Eddie propped the bug up against his bed. He had sensed no fear at all coming from the bug, despite the dire situation it was in, and it seemed to regard his parents with curiosity of all things. It was comfortable around humans, that much was clear, although why it had attacked twenty-seven of them was still a mystery.

The scent of the syrup perked the still-exhausted creature up enough for it to accept the bowl it was offered. It had sucked the syrup up quickly, the sound of it like when one's straw sucks up the last of one's drink. Once it had finished, it once again revealed its capacity to feel emotions similar to that of a human, in this case the emotion being gratitude. The warm feeling had seeped into Eddie's chest as he watched the bug hold the bowl out in a request for more, like the world's most messed-up Oliver Twist. They hadn't had any more maple syrup, but the bug, who they had now dubbed 'Butterfly Boy' (B.B. for short) had been just as eager to consume Mrs. Butterworth's brand syrup. He drank down the two bottles that the Bodkins had in their pantry, and it hadn't seemed likely that he would fall back into unconsciousness within the near future.

At around five am, the last vestiges of adrenaline had finally worn off, and Eddie began to feel the effects of sleep deprivation. Perhaps it was for this reason that yet another wild thought had popped into his head at that moment. He moved from the desk chair that he'd been sitting in to the edge of his bed, close enough so that B.B. could reach out and grab him if he had wanted to. B.B. had looked at him, not at all alarmed by Eddie's close proximity. B.B.'s emotions had been lingering around Eddie's brain, and Eddie had focused all of his psychic energy on them instinctively, unknowingly forming a telepathic link with the bug. The ease of it had surprised him, but he had quickly gotten over it and had brought up an image of Anton Papadonkus in his mind. The image was of how Eddie perceived him- a reedy man of average height, with sharp, critical dark eyes, and equally sharp nose that was more often than not turned upwards, his arms crossed and mouth set in a disapproving frown. He sent the image over to B.B.'s mind (unsure of just how he was doing it, but doing it all the same) and a jolt of pure excitement ran through him. A second later, B.B. sent an image back, this one of the same man, though he appeared to be much taller and a whole lot more friendly in B.B's mind.

"What's that in his hand?" Eddie had asked automatically. "Is that a popsicle?"

B.B. hadn't been able to understand the words, so Eddie had sent another image out, this one of a blue Otterpop. More excitement from B.B., and then a mental picture of a purple Otterpop immediately followed.

"Grape is your favorite, huh?" Eddie had said. B.B. had begun rubbing the hands of its upper limbs together, the equivalent of a child clapping its hands together. The action had been cute, in a freaky sort of way, and Eddie hadn't been able to keep himself from smiling a little.

Mrs. Bodkin had entered the room shortly after, carrying a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of toast slathered in grape jelly. "How do you stand the stench?" she had grumbled as she handed the food over to her son, her wary eyes on B.B. (whose own eyes had been looking at the toast with interest).

"I actually don't smell a thing," Eddie had admitted. The taste that he had been ignoring up until that point returned in full force at the sight of his breakfast, but he took it anyway, knowing that not eating would be a bad idea. "I can…taste him?" he said, the explanation prompted by his mother's quizzical expression. "Tastes like rotten fruit that's been soaked in gasoline." The toast briefly flashed in his mind and he had handed the plate over to B.B. in response to the request.

"Good Lord. All the more reason to call the Sheriff and get this thing out of here."

"About that, ma," Eddie had begun as B.B. puzzled over how to eat the grape jelly without consuming any of the bread. "I was thinking…"

Mrs. Bodkin's first reaction had been a hard "No!" followed by "are you crazy?" and "oh look at that, he's got jam all over him," (this in reference to B.B., who had been faring poorly against the toast). But Eddie hadn't been deterred, as he knew that his mother could be swayed by reasonable and sensible logic. Sure enough, she capitulated when he pointed out that he was the only person able to communicate with B.B. and that if he couldn't get the whole story out of the butterfly than nobody at the station would be able to, and thus there would be no way to know how to undo what had been done to the victims, nor would they be able to find out about Mr. Papadonkus' involvement. She had sighed then, and told him that she would handle things with Mr. Bodkin.

"But if this little guy takes one single step out line, we are calling Sheriff Walls," she had warned hands on her hips. "Understand?" Eddie had nodded, grateful that she was giving him this chance, and then she had walked out of the room, effectively leaving him to it.

Eating his oatmeal had taken about ten minutes, and he spent much of that time thinking about just how he was going to go about interrogating a giant butterfly that could not understand human language and had the intelligence of a child at best. As Eddie ate, B.B. had kept himself busy by rolling the leftover toast, soggy with his saliva, into a little ball. He offered the ball to Eddie just as he was finishing up his oatmeal, a meager gift for his savior. "Um, thanks," Eddie had said as he accepted the ball and put it into his now empty bowl. B.B. had seemed pleased by the action.

Breakfast over; Eddie had then stared at B.B., puzzling over where to begin. He had already confirmed that B.B. had interacted with one human- perhaps he should try and see if B.B. recognized anybody else? He had closed his eyes and thought of Chris Sealoft, one of the few victims that he had known personally. He and Sealoft were acquaintances, friendly, but not friends. B.B. hadn't responded at first, taking a minute to place Sealoft in his memories, before sending back another image, one of a young man sitting up his bed. The features of the room were blurred, as though half-remembered, but Eddie had been able to instantly recognize the young man in the bed as Chris Sealoft. A shock had run through him, then. Part of him had been hoping that this creature, with its childish mannerisms, love of sweets, and easy trust had been innocent, and its appearance in the forest at this time merely a coincidence. But no, that clearly wasn't the case. "How?" Eddie had asked, examining B.B. "How did you do it? How could you do it?"

B.B., of course, hadn't been able to answer a question he couldn't understand, and Eddie had had no choice but to move on. He thought of Bradley Vipperman, and was soon after rewarded with an image of Vipperman's last few moments as himself. This image had been clearer than the previous one, due to the headlights of Vipperman's truck illuminating the surrounding forest, and Eddie had been able to make out more details than he had in the blurry darkness of Chris Sealoft's bedroom. Vipperman had been standing near his truck, looking upwards with an open mouth, a bottle of beer in his hands. His eyes had been as wide as dinner plates, and staring up at something that was hovering just above him.

That something had obviously been B.B., but what had B.B. been doing to mesmerize Vipperman so? Sure, B.B. had a frightening and strange appearance, but Vipperman was infamous around Sutton for his aggressive tendencies. His first reaction upon seeing B.B. should have been to throw that beer bottle at him, not stand there and stare. Something B.B. had done had paralyzed him, but what?

There had been no way to ask that question with only images available to him. He tried sending that same image of Vipperman back to B.B., but only received a blank stare in response. A few minutes passed, and Eddie decided that he'd have better luck figuring that mystery out if he looked at more of B.B.'s memories of the victims.

Vipperman and Sealoft had been the only victims whose faces Eddie had been able to remember clearly (Sealoft because they hung out in the same nerdy circles, and Vipperman because he was so infamous) and Eddie had once again found himself stuck on how to proceed. He knew the other victims by name, but he hadn't been certain that B.B. would be able to recognize the vague recollection Eddie had of their facial features. The solution to this problem lay under of pile of paperbacks on his desk-last year's yearbook. He had pushed the paper books to the side and grabbed the yearbook, opening it on his lap.

The sight of the yearbook itself had spurred B.B. into excitement. He had fidgeted a little, his antennae twitching as Eddie flipped through the book (he had mistakenly gone straight to the junior section, when he should have been looking through the sophomores). Eddie had looked up, puzzled by B.B.'s behavior, and then an image of Mr. Papadonkus holding that same yearbook unexpectedly arose in his mind's eye. In the image, Papadonkus had been holding the book open, and pointing to a picture within it that was too blurry for Eddie to make out.

Apparently Donkus had used the yearbook to show B.B. which student he should go after next. But what had been in it for B.B. he had wondered as B.B. made a failed attempt to scoot closer to his chair. Eddie then thought back to the other picture of Donkus that B.B. had shared, with him, the one where he had been holding an Otterpop. He brought the image up again and sent it over to B.B., who in turn sent an image of itself sucking the purple liquid right out of the plastic wrapper. A second image was sent of Papadonkus handing over entire box of them over a moment later.

Stunned, Eddie had sat back in his chair, almost unable to believe what he had just seen. B.B.'s motive for attacking those students had been…popsicles. Just popsicles, popsicles that could be found at pretty much any grocery store. Anger had risen up within Eddie then, the same anger he had felt the first time he had encountered B.B. in the forest. Was this why twenty-seven of his peers were shuffling around Sutton like zombies? For Otterpops? Outrage at the sheer absurdity of it all had left him trembling in his chair, his teeth gritted and his nails digging into his clenched fists. He'd thought about punching Papadonkus before (what teenager in Sutton hadn't?) but never had the urge to do so been more compelling than it had at that moment.

He heard the tarp under B.B. shift, and when he had looked away from his fists he saw that B.B. had shrunk back, his knees up and his middle limbs wrapped around them, his wings curled around him protectively. B.B.'s fear-the first of it that Eddie had felt since meeting the bug- seeped into his mind then, causing the blood to drain from his face. Immediately guilt (his own, this time) replaced the fear, and Eddie had reached out, stopping short of actually touching B.B.'s wings. "I-now, wait, I ain't angry at you!" he said, trying to sound as reassuring as he could. "It ain't you that I'm mad at!" An idea had struck him then, and he brought up the memory of when Papadonkus had yelled at him for being out the halls after the bell had rung last year. He sent the image of Papadonkus sneering down at him condescendingly, hoping that B.B. would understand what he was trying to convey.

Although the bug's eyes were too alien for Eddie to identify any emotion that might be going on behind them, a feeling of confusion and disbelief had permeated the room's atmosphere. B.B. had quickly sent his reply-an image of the same man, smiling proudly down at B.B. as he reached out to pat the bug the same way that one would pat a dog that had just done a trick. The image had been a startling one. Eddie had not known that it was possible for the normally pinch-faced English teacher to look so pleased about anything. It had made sense though- what would please an asshole like this more than exacting a disproportionate revenge on his students? Hell, the only reason that he had shown any kindness towards B.B. at all was because he was using him for his nefarious plot.

It had all suddenly seemed so sad. It was obvious that B.B. was attached to Dick-head Donkus, and had an innate desire to please those he was close to. Was Donkus even aware of how sick B.B. was? If Eddie's attack had actually done B.B. in, would Donkus have mourned him? Or would he only have been pissed that his weapon had been destroyed?

Eddie had guessed that the answers to these questions were no, no and yes. He had considered sending more proof of Papadonkus' true nature- he had witnessed plenty of the teacher's outbursts towards other students at school, only a small fraction of them justified- but had decided against it. The confusion still lingered between them, meaning that the image Eddie had sent had shaken B.B. up somewhat, even as he defended his favorite human. It had seemed wrong and mean to continue this subject, so he had gone back to questioning B.B. about the victims.

The yearbook had been open to the page that had Cheyanne Walker's picture on it, so Eddie decided to do her next. The image he received back was eerily similar to the previous ones. She'd been looking up at B.B. with that same open-mouthed and wide-eyed expression, and standing stock-still. She'd been alone in an alley, indicating that B.B. must've gotten her as she was taking a shortcut on her way home. Like Vipperman, it seemed odd that she had just stood there while B.B. did whatever it was that he did- she was an athlete, after all, one of the school's best, and at the very least, she should've been able to escape had she ran.

Unless something had been keeping her from running.

A pattern emerged as Eddie continued this back-and-forth with B.B. Every victim had had that same facial expression that Cheyanne and Vipperman had had, every victim had been out by themselves, and all of them had been looking up. At around eight am, B.B. had begun to lose steam, so Eddie had brought him a jar of his mother's homemade grape jam, for lack of anything better to give him.

As B.B. happily ate, Eddie thought over the pattern he had uncovered. B.B. had been flying during all of the attacks, that much was certain. If he had been on the ground the victim would have been looking down instead of up. B.B.'s wings were pretty big compared to his small body; his wing span would have taken up the entire width of Eddie's small bedroom had they been spread out. Upon closer inspection, Eddie had also noted that each wing had a large black spot on the upper part of each wing, along with two smaller spots on the bottom wing. The spots were dull and sickly looking in color and Eddie had wondered if that was how they looked when B.B. was healthy.

B.B. had finished his jam a moment later. The jar had slipped out from his fingers carelessly, rolling away towards Eddie's closet. "Be careful, dude," Eddie had said as he brought an image of B.B.'s wings as they appeared now in his mind. "My mom will have a fit if you bust one of her good jars."

The image was then sent. A minute passed, and then another, with no response. Eddie had sent it again, and again received no response. Eddie had figured that B.B. had not understood what was being asked, and had been about to move on when he finally got a reply. The image was a full-body shot of B.B. himself, wings spread out. The B.B. in this image looked much different from the B.B. currently sitting up against his bed. The mental B.B. looked to be more vibrant that real B.B. did- his color was brighter, his antennae didn't hang listlessly, and his eyes appeared clearer. Most noticeable had been the eye spots on his wings, their pallid coloring having been replaced by deep red and pitched black ringed by warning-sign yellow. The purple and orange that decorated the edges of his wings had also been different, the purple being a shade similar to that of a violet rather than bruised flesh. A feeling of sadness had accompanied this image, as though B.B. thought his chances of ever recovering from whatever was ailing him were slim. Eddie had wanted to ask why he was so ill to begin with, but he hadn't known how.

Besides, he had his own suspicions about that, along with how B.B.'s abilities worked. He theorized B.B. was using his eyespots to enthrall his victims somehow. Granted, Eddie's knowledge of hypnosis came mostly from comic books and cartoons, but he figured that there must have been some basis in reality to those portrayals. The mechanics of this, Eddie had not known, but he couldn't imagine any other way that B.B. could have done this that correlated with the evidence that he had collected.

As for B.B.'s sickness, Eddie had assumed that keeping a hold on all of his victims was taking its toll on B.B.'s health. The only injuries B.B. had were the burns on his feet and wings, which had been caused by Eddie and B.B. had been sick before Eddie had found him.

Eddie had found the method and the motive to this madness by eight-thirty am. Unfortunately, his progress had stalled. There was little other information that Eddie had been able to obtain from B.B.'s memories of the victims, and he hadn't known where to go from there. He had inquired about Mr. Papadonkus multiple times, but B.B. had become reluctant to 'talk' about him, and only so much information could be gleaned from pictures anyway. The only thing of interest that Eddie had discovered was that B.B. had met Donkus in a forest, but he had no idea where that forest was located. Questions such as how Mr. Papadonkus had found out about B.B.'s abilities, or how the teacher and the bug had communicated with each other remained unanswered.

B.B., for his part, had become a little depressed by that point. Apparently, it had finally dawned on him that he had done something wrong, though he didn't seem to understand why. Sadness and confusion followed every exchange they had about the teacher, perhaps because B.B. had finally begun to realize that he wasn't going to be seeing his friend anytime again anytime soon.

Throughout all of this, Eddie's parents had taken turns checking up on them, occasionally bringing along a snack or a jar of jam for B.B. They had both been worried, though as the day went on, their concern became less about their son being alone in a room with a giant bug monster and more about what they were going to do about said monster when all of this was over.

The rest of the day passed with Eddie being largely unsuccessful in getting any new information. The conversations that he had with B.B. were frequently distracted by requests for more jam and by entertaining but otherwise useless derailments. One moment Eddie would be trying to find out about B.B.'s origins, the next B.B. would be showing him an image forest fire he had witnessed (Or started? Eddie hadn't been sure). Hours had gone by in this manner, with Eddie getting strange and amusing insights into the life of a three-foot mutant butterfly. By the end of it, Eddie had concluded that B.B. was a curious, friendly little fellow whose worst quality was that he wasn't all that bright.

He was also a lonely creature. At no point during their time together had B.B. mentioned any other mutants that resembled him. It was no wonder that he had become so attached to Papadonkus- the man was probably the only friend he had ever had. Once again, Eddie had felt pity for this naïve, but well-meaning creature that gotten wrapped up in an insane revenge scheme.

At dusk, Eddie had been wondering what B.B.'s eventual fate would be. Although his intentions had not been malicious, and the whole thing was mostly Mr. Papadonkus' fault, B.B. was still very much guilty of hypnotizing twenty-seven people. If there was a prison for big mutant bugs, Eddie had not heard of it. Chances were, the Sheriff would take one look at B.B. and put a bullet between his buggy eyes. _Maybe if I get B.B. to release his hold on everybody,_ Eddie had thought, _they'll be more lenient on him. But how the heck am I gonna do that?_

Unfortunately, Eddie had not had any time to formulate a plan, because Truman and Sasha had knocked on their door shortly afterwards.

* * *

"And, uh," Eddie finished somewhat awkwardly. "Y'all know the rest." A moment passed. "Sorry I couldn't find out more."

"No, it's alright, man," Truman said as Sasha dug through one of his jacket pockets. "Just catching this little guy was a huge help. The fact that you found out anything at all from him is pretty amazing considering the circumstances."

"I had already suspected that the eye spots on B.B.'s wings were the catalyst for the hypnosis," Sasha added. In his hand he held a small door, the standard issue psy-portal assigned to all agents. "Your testimony has confirmed it."

Eddie nodded, the words doing nothing to change his grim expression. A question hung in the air between the three Bodkins, and although both agents knew what that question was, they stayed silent, waiting for one of the Bodkins to muster up enough nerve to ask it. Predictably it was Mrs. Bodkin who broke the silence. "Well, what now? What happens next?"

Sasha held up the miniature door. "The nest step for us is to explore B.B.'s mind," he said, "and hope that we find a way to reverse what he's done to the victims."

The three Bodkins stared at the psy-portal with matching expressions of bafflement. "You're gonna go…in his head?" Eddie asked, his eyes flicking over to B.B. and then back to the door.

"Yes," Sasha answered, offering no further explanation.

"Shouldn't you be out lookin' for Papadonkus? Seein' as he's the mastermind of this and all," Mr. Bodkin said, scratching his head.

"Mr. Papadonkus left town yesterday. We've got an A.P.B. out on him, but there's not much else we can do until we hear back about it from the Sheriff," Truman said as he examined B.B. The butterfly's head was small, and most of it consisted of his eyes, so Truman had no idea where Sasha was going to stick the portal. "The victims are our top priority right now."

"Is this going to take long?" Mrs. Bodkin asked.

"Is it going to hurt him?" Eddie said at the same time.

"No to both of those questions," Sasha replied. "We will only be in there for a few seconds, and it shouldn't hurt him at all. Unless something goes horribly wrong."

It seemed as though the Bodkins had more questions that they wanted to ask, but the desire to have this ordeal done with overruled their curiosity. All eyes turned to B.B., oblivious to what was about to happen, and happy to have so many humans gathered around him. "Can I try to tell him what's going on?" Eddie requested. "Just to, you know, prepare him and stuff."

"Go ahead," Sasha said. "I need to locate a good place to put this anyway."

"Can you stick it on to his eye?" Truman suggested as Eddie communicated with B.B.

"I'd prefer not to," Sasha said, grimacing. "Hmm. Perhaps the back of his head, here?" He pointed to the area where B.B.'s head transitioned into his back.

"Worth a shot."

"Alright," Eddie said, standing up from the bed and stepping to the side to get out of the way. "I don't know how much of this he really gets, but he's as ready as he'll ever be." B.B. sat up a little straighter, as though concurring with that statement. Sasha got up from his chair walked over to the bug's side. He telekinetically tilted the bug's body forward enough so that the back of his head was visible. The door than floated down from Sasha's hand and stuck itself just above B.B.'s back, close to where his brainstem was located.

The door opened just as Truman walked up to B.B.'s other side, the glow beyond the door bright and colorless. Within seconds, they were both astrally projecting themselves right into the butterfly mutant's mind.


End file.
